Bob Crossley (1912-2010)

Born: Northwich

Studied: Rochdale School of Art

Moved to St Ives: 1959

Elected Member Manchester Academy 1950
Elected Member Penwith Society of Arts 1960
Elected Member Newlyn Society of Artists 1961

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Solo Exhibitions:

2012
'Bob Crossley, Centenary Year', Belgrave St. Ives
2009
'Bob Crossley, A Lancashire Lad Book Launch', Belgrave St. Ives'Bob Crossley - Recent Work 2008', Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

'Paintings', Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

2004
'A Retrospective', Rochdale Art Gallery

1999
'Post Retrospective', Penwith Gallery, St. Ives

1987
'Retrospective' Penwith Gallery, St. Ives

1980
Bristol Art Centre

1979
Penwith Gallery, St. Ives

1972
Curwen Gallery, London

1965
Gallerie Bique, Madrid

1964
Reid Gallery, London

1960
Reid Gallery, London

1958
Crane Gallery Manchester

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Selected Mixed Exhibitions:

2012
St Ives Exhibition 2012, Belgrave St Ives

'Axis: Aspects of British Abstract Painting, St Ives and London', Belgrave St Ives

Salmagundi, Belgrave St. Ives
Post-War Abstract, Belgrave St. Ives
Print Show - Modern, Contemporary & Urban, Belgrave St. Ives

2009
Belgrave St. Ives
December Exhibition, Belgrave St. Ives
Tate St. Ives
Penwith Galleries

2006
December Exhibition, Belgrave St Ives
'The Cornish Connection', Belgrave St Ives

'29 to 92' Belgrave St Ives

2005
'St. Ives Past and Present', Sherborne House, Dorset
'St. Ives Exhibition', Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

2004
'29 - 92', Belgrave Gallery St. Ives
'Porthmeor', Belgrave Gallery St. Ives

1999
'As Dark As Light' Tate St Ives

1972
Beaux Arts Gallery

1968
Redfern Gallery

1960s
Arts Council Northern Ireland, Belfast

1960s
Wills Lane Gallery, St. Ives
City Art Gallery, Milton Keynes
Sail Loft Gallery, St. Ives
Newlyn Art Gallery (to the present)

1959
Penwith Gallery (to the present)

1957
Piccadilly Gallery, London

1950s
Paris Salon

1950s
The London Group

1950on
Manchester Academy


Selected Collections

Contemporary Art Society
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Museum & Art Gallery, Durban
RAF Museum Hendon
Rochdale Art Gallery

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Catalogue extract:
After a career spanning nearly 60 years, Bob Crossley is still painting with enviable vigour, conscience and enthusiasm, in both oil and acrylic, at the age of almost 94. His distinctive approach to painting is informed by an uncompromising and rigorous philosophical and ethical stance, which imbues his work with an undiminished integrity. The oil paintings - generally abstracted treatments of either figure or landscape - are characterised by a 'wet-in-wet' approach that holds respect for the unity of the picture plane as paramount. His brushwork is guided by an insistence on spontaneity, rhythm, improvisation, the possibilities of chance, and the perfection of practise. These qualities are combined with an unerringly harmonic sense of colour and tone colour (predominantly of an 'earthy' nature) in the creation of works that are instantly recognisable as his own. However, despite a successful career and the deep respect of many of his peers and collectors (stemming from the consistently high quality of his oil paintings, his unique style of acrylic painting, and the commercial success of around 50 editions of screenprints in the late 60s and early 70s), Bob Crossley's work has, in some respects, not received the full accolades it so richly deserves. He is a painter influenced initially by the Impressionism of the early 20th century whose work is informed most tangibly by the post-war Modernism of the 1950s. The works in this exhibition demonstrate Bob's strengths impeccably. The large 'Diagonal Blues' from 1978 is a fine example of his broad-brushed examinations into the relative opacity and transparency of acrylic paint, rendered here with confident energy, vibrant colour, and controlled composition.