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Jeffrey Steele (born 3 July 1931) is an abstract painter. In Paris (1959) he encountered the work of artists working in the mode of geometric abstraction, such as Victor Vasarely (1906–97), Max Bill (1908–94) and Josef Albers (1888–1976), and adopted a lifelong abstract approach. For eight years he worked purely in black and white and was identified with the Op-art movement. He incorporated other colours into his work in the 1970s. His work has been exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Milan, the Venice Biennale (1986), and elsewhere in Europe and the Americas. He has participated in more than 100 group exhibitions and had 17 one-man shows, the first at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1961. His works are in a number of public collections in the UK, including Tate Britain, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Arts Council and the Department of the Environment, and in other countries. Steele's painting ''Gespenstische Gestalt'' (1961–62) was shown in the exhibition "Dynamo, Un Siècle de Lumière et de Mouvement dans l'Art 1913/2013" at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2013. After he had gained a reputation as a practising artist in the early 1960s Steele was accepted by the college authorities with which he had previously tussled and he began lecturing in fine art in Cardiff, Barry and Newport. He then lectured at Portsmouth Polytechnic from May 1968 until December 1989. He was a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia experimental orchestra organised by Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno, playing trombone. == Early life to 1960 == He grew up in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a slate fireplace enameller, Arthur, and Enid (née Washer), a Woolworth's salesgirl. He studied at Cardiff and Newport art colleges, but had a series of quarrels with the teaching staff there and did not gain a formal qualification. During the 1950s he maintained a studio in Cardiff and experimented with representational styles. As a pacifist he was a conscientious objector to National Service. During the 1950s Steele worked figuratively while being employed as a Rediffusion radio technician and also engaging in a programme of self-education in European languages and philosophy, as well as art. He was particularly influenced by the allegorical style of Stanley Spencer (1891–1959). Steele's painting ''Christ Carrying the Cross'' (1952-3, set in Adamsdown) was shown at the Royal Academy in London in summer 1953 and caused controversy in his home town because of its satirical message.〔South Wales Echo, 2 April 1953, 1-2–3 May 1953〕 Steele took a studio and later a flat in High Street, Cardiff, which became a meeting point for his artistic and intellectual contemporaries in the city. He also lived in London in 1956–57, working as a storeman at the Stoll Theatre until its demolition. Steele had been studying Cézanne, Cubism and the Abstract Expressionists but said later: "I mistrusted the deliberate bypassing of the thinking part of the mind which gestural painting entails and some love of the philosophical method of Descartes predisposed me towards a rational and austere form."〔Quoted in Gloria Carnevali's essay for the exhibition catalogue for "Jeffrey Steele 1960–1990", at the Clare Hall Gallery, Cambridge, October 1992.〕 In 1959 he won a French government scholarship to study in Paris, initially for three months. There he visited the show "Antagonismes" at the musée des Arts décoratifs, and saw the work of Auguste Herbin (1882–1960), Max Bill, Richard Lohse (1902–1988), the Venezuelan Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005) and, especially influential for Steele, Vasarely.〔Steele to Blannin, op.cit.〕 He determined to start afresh and when he returned to Cardiff he destroyed all figurative work in his possession. He started with what could not be eliminated while still being an artist making pictures: the two essentials, first a blank white (when primed) canvas, and second, an element (or elements) of one colour, these two (figure and ground) interacting with each other. From this simplest possible binary situation he built up a new practice, beginning with depictions of ovoid forms. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jeffrey Steele (artist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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