The Directors of Marlborough Fine Art are delighted to announce their forthcoming exhibition of Celia Paul’s work, Identity, which comprises some 40 paintings, watercolours and works on paper completed over the last four years. Also on view will be Mothers and Daughters – an exhibition devoted to etchings and drawings around this theme.
Celia Paul was born in 1959 and studied at the Slade from 1976-1981.
Celia has used her mother as her main model for all her working life although recently her mother has become too frail to climb the eighty steps up to her studio opposite the British Museum. As she says in the catalogue introduction (in conversation with Catherine Lampert), Lawrence Gowing used to say that ‘my mother was my Mont Sainte-Victoire.’
Some of Celia’s recent visionary work is inspired by her Central London surroundings. ‘I’ve been here all these years and until recently not used the place...So I wanted the Museum and the Post Office Tower and St. George’s to be like the backdrop to this intimate drama of my sisters.'
The remarkable watercolour of Five Sisters, the front cover of the catalogue, depicts Celia and her four sisters. The individual watercolours of the sisters are engrossing and reminiscent of the figures of Virtue, Fortitude, Prudence, Magnanimity, Temperance and Justice in Lorenzetti’s The Good Government.
The exhibition also contains Celia’s last paintings of her mother, a number of self-portraits, and several studies of her son.
Celia has exhibited widely and her work was included in the major exhibition The School of London: From Bacon to Bevan at the Musée Maillol in Paris which travelled to Santiago de Compostela and the Kunsthaus Vienna in 1998-99. A Retrospective of her work entitled Stillness was shown at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal in 2004. In 2005 Celia’s exhibition Shadows was shown at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield and in 2006 her London exhibition, Where I am Now, was held at the Marlborough. In June 2010 Celia was included in the Self-Consciousness Exhibition at the Veneklasen Werner Gallery in Berlin, curated by Hilton Als and Peter Doig.
Her work is included in many private and public collections including the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Yale Center for British Art and the Saatchi Collection.
A fully illustrated catalogue for Identity includes an introduction by Catherine Lampert. Kate Soper has written the introduction to the catalogue for Mothers and Daughters, the graphics exhibition.
Celia is available for interviews by appointment through the gallery. For further information please contact John Erle-Drax, Mary Miller or Frankie Rossi on
0207 629 5161 or email: mmiller@marlboroughfineart.com