Bryan Wynter

Born: 1915
Died: 1975

Bryan Wynter began his artistic journey at the Westminster School of Art in London, attending from 1937 to 1938, before moving on to the Slade School of Art, also in London, from 1938 to 1940. When World War II broke out, he chose to register as a conscientious objector, spending the war years in a laboratory conducting animal testing. In 1945, he made his home in Zennor, near St Ives in Cornwall, where he lived close to his good friend Patrick Heron. Two years later, in 1947, Wynter helped establish the Crypt Group, aiming to showcase the works of contemporary artists who were often overlooked by the mainstream St Ives Society exhibitions. Between 1951 and 1955, he served as an instructor at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham. His work was featured with the London Group starting in 1954 and with the Penwith Society in St Ives from 1949 to 1958.

Early in his career, Wynter drew significant inspiration from Surrealism. By the early 1950s, while teaching at Bath Academy, he was exposed to fresh European artistic trends through colleagues like William Scott, Peter Lanyon, Adrian Heath, and Kenneth Armitage. Their influence subtly reshaped his approach to still-life and landscape pieces. In 1956, during a stay in London, Wynter visited the Tate Gallery’s Modern Art in the United States exhibition, where he encountered Abstract Expressionism. Blending elements of both Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, he explored his subconscious in his art, aided by mescaline—a drug legal at the time—which fueled his creative experimentation.

In 1965, Wynter embarked on a new phase, creating a series of paintings centered on water. Departing from the subdued palette of his earlier pieces, he used vibrant, psychedelic hues and sweeping, expressive brushstrokes to capture the flow and shimmer of water—its reflections and refractions. For Wynter, water symbolized renewal and spiritual vitality, and these later works represented his effort to bridge the natural world with the human soul, marking the peak of his artistic evolution.