Colin William Moss, A.R.C.A (1914-2005)
Painter, draughtsman, camoufleur, printmaker and teacher.
Colin Moss, Self Portrait 1956
Colin Moss was born in Ipswich in 1914. He studied at the Plymouth Art School, 1930-1934. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, studying under Gilbert Spencer, Charles Mahoney and Percy Horton, 1934-1938. Among his contemporaries was Mervyn Levy, who became a life-long friend. In the same year, he completed mural paintings for the British pavilion at the New York World Fair.
During the war, he was a camouflage designer to the Ministry of Home Security, a position he was to hold until active war service took him to the Middle East, where he stayed until 1946. After he was demobbed, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Ipswich School of Art and held that position until his retirement in 1979.
In 1961, he studied under Kokoschka in Salzburg and, like his teacher, he was an expressionist, using strong rich colours and tones, and forceful brushstrokes. In 1976, Moss was a founder member of ‘Six in Suffolk Group’. He was elected chairman of Ipswich Art Club in 1980 and later became its president. He took part in many mixed shows, including ‘Britain in Watercolour’ at the RWS in 1953, solo exhibitions at Kensington Gallery in 1951, the Zwemmer Gallery in 1955 and many shows in East Anglia.
Source: Buckman: Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945
His works are in the collections of the British Museum, The Tate Gallery Archive, The Imperial War Museum, The Government Art Collection, Ipswich Borough Council Museums & Galleries, Leamington Spa Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham Art Gallery, and the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society.
Colin taught hundreds of students, including Maggi Hambling, during three decades at Ipswich School of Art. An exhibition of his work was held at Ipswich Town Hall Galleries in 2010 and it was opened by Maggi.
Click here to watch an audio slideshow as Maggi Hambling and others remember Colin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/suffolk/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8473000/8473284.stm
Our Thanks
This site is maintained by the Estate of Colin Moss
Our thanks go to the Imperial War Museum for granting permission to use their images.
Colin Moss stands favourably alongside the Kitchen Sink artists of the 1950s such as John Bratby, Derek Greaves and Jack Smith but, as a master draughtsman of the highest order, he avoided the prevalent trends of abstractionism to tread a lonelier, yet determined, path outside the mainstream. He portrayed the hard-hitting realities of urban and working class life in Ipswich and London from the 1930s to the present day yet the work was cosmopolitan. Its internationalist flavours of social realism and an expressionistic handling of paint and colour sang “out from the walls, like rich base baritones, drenching everything in a cascade of boisterous colour; palpitating reds – an almost unbelievably skilful range of the violet-mauve-purple vein-shattering blues – and vibrant falsetto greens.
Colin Moss’s Work
Colin Moss: Life Observed by Chloe Bennett
“Whether we look at Colin’s most recent work or that produced some sixty years ago, it is impossible not to admire his consistent energy and application that never diminished until the last few years of his life. Colin Moss’s vision, revealing both the light and dark sides of everyday human existence, is gritty and compellingly honest.”
People
Man Sweeping
1958
Hunger Marchers
1936
Smoking Man
1980
Man with a Drill
1960
Colchester & Ipswich Museums Service
World War II
Foot Soldier
1980
Playing Soldiers
1979
Colchester & Ipswich Museums Service
Guardroom
1946
Colchester & Ipswich Museums Service
Moonlight over the Third Reich
1982
Ben Uri Gallery & Museum
Camoufleur
Camouflaged Factory Buildings
1941
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum
Water Camouflage
1943
Imperial War Museum
A Camouflage Scheme in Progress
1943
Imperial War Museum
The Big Tower, Camouflaged
1943
Imperial War Museum
Flowers
Cape Gooseberries
1982
Gardeners’ World
1985
Red Flowers
1987
A still life of Flowers on a Chequered Tablecloth
1983
Private collection: Samantha & Uğur Vata
Religious
The Last Supper
1981
The Nativity
1948
Private collection: Samantha & Uğur Vata
The Entombment
1985
Christ’s Body
Landscapes
Houses seen from a Picket Fence
1941
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum
Ipswich from the New Cut
1950
Colchester & Ipswich Museums Service
Danger Deep Water
1941
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum
Cabbage Fields with Townscape Beyond
1941
Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum
Life Drawing
Pastel Nude
Study for Bathers
1980
Nude Back
Nude on a Drape
1942
Still Life
Fish for Dinner
1954
Private collection Samantha and Uğur Vata
Still Life, Plaice & Onions
1954
Fruit on a Spanish Plate
1954
