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.