Phyllida Barlow, a renowned British sculptor, died at the age of 78. Before achieving her initial breakthrough, the Newcastle-born artist renowned for her enormous installations had a lengthy career as an art instructor.
Barlow frequently constructed her huge sculptural works with commonplace materials such as plywood, cardboard, plaster, cement, fabric, and paint.
Hauser & Wirth, the artist’s gallery, characterized her as a “guiding light and inspiration to so many.”
According to the gallery, she is survived by her husband, Fabian Peake, and their five children.
After the Second World War, her family relocated to Richmond, London, where she was born in 1944. The bomb devastation and reconstruction of the capital are claimed to have served as lifelong sources of inspiration for her paintings.
Her corpus of work, which also consists of drawing, installation, and writing, has been included in solo exhibits around the globe.
In 1960, Barlow enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art in London, where he first studied painting before transferring to sculpting.
Afterward, she attended the Slade School of Art, where she experimented with materials such as plaster, resin, fiberglass, and wood.
Thereafter, Barlow taught at other art colleges before returning to Slade in 1988, where she served as a professor for twenty years.
According to Hauser & Wirth, an invitation to exhibit at the Serpentine Gallery in 2010 brought her work to the attention of an international audience.
Barlow reached a period of global renown at the age of 65, according to the gallery, with her work featured in multiple high-profile solo exhibits around Europe and the United States.
Barlow, who joined the Royal Academy of Arts in 2011, received a CBE in 2015 and a damehood in 2021 for her contributions to the arts.
In 2017, she was chosen to represent Britain at the Venice International Art Biennale, the most prestigious festival for contemporary art.
Director of Tate Modern Frances Morris stated,
“Barlow’s practice implicitly acknowledges that in a world saturated with objects, the role of sculpture and the sculptor’s job may be less about making things and more about generating a particular experience of the work and the world in which it temporarily resides.”
Will Gompertz, a former BBC arts editor, once defined her work as “using the destroyed and the discarded, the frail and the disregarded to create works that are frequently presented in the marbled halls of the art establishment.”
The head of Hauser & Wirth, Iwan Wirth, described Barlow as a “cherished friend and visionary artist.”
“Her spirit of kindness permeated her paintings, her writings, and her many years of teaching and mentoring,” he explained.
Phyllida was a guiding light and an inspiration to a great number of people since she was a truly considerate and affable human being.
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