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| The most important influence upon the artistic career of Georgina Hunt was working in New York from 1970 until 1972. She found studio space in Manhattan and met the stars of the east coast art scene, most pertinently Jules Olitski. Olitski at this stage was painting with a spray gun, covering canvases with evanescent veils of colour. The technique was exactly right for Hunt, who has died aged 89. | The most important influence upon the artistic career of Georgina Hunt was working in New York from 1970 until 1972. She found studio space in Manhattan and met the stars of the east coast art scene, most pertinently Jules Olitski. Olitski at this stage was painting with a spray gun, covering canvases with evanescent veils of colour. The technique was exactly right for Hunt, who has died aged 89. |
| The canvases, usually 8ft square, that she painted from then on were expressions of cosmic depths, their subtly modulating drifts of colour composed of tiny grains of acrylic. The critic William Packer described them as "rich in the mysteries of space and light" and Guy Brett, in his introduction to the catalogue for Hunt's big show at Camden Arts Centre, north London, in 1982, referred to "their stilling of visual tensions and associational imagery in a luminous presence of colour". | |
| With hindsight, she had been reaching all her painting life for the abstraction she then attained. Even when studying at the Slade School (1945-50) under the charismatic William Coldstream, one of the founders in the 1930s of the highly influential Euston Road school of urban realists which cast its shadow forward over many 1950s art courses, Hunt's work held a different promise. | With hindsight, she had been reaching all her painting life for the abstraction she then attained. Even when studying at the Slade School (1945-50) under the charismatic William Coldstream, one of the founders in the 1930s of the highly influential Euston Road school of urban realists which cast its shadow forward over many 1950s art courses, Hunt's work held a different promise. |
| One of her early paintings, Crouching Figure, is clearly influenced by Coldstream, showing a nude art-class model sitting on a smallish table like a statue on a plinth, leaning forward and pulling her right foot back with her hand towards her bottom, her left leg doubled under, her head inclined forward to show the hair but not her face. It is a closed form, as neat as a netsuke, that perfect type of Japanese ivory carving that can be cradled in the palm of a hand. | One of her early paintings, Crouching Figure, is clearly influenced by Coldstream, showing a nude art-class model sitting on a smallish table like a statue on a plinth, leaning forward and pulling her right foot back with her hand towards her bottom, her left leg doubled under, her head inclined forward to show the hair but not her face. It is a closed form, as neat as a netsuke, that perfect type of Japanese ivory carving that can be cradled in the palm of a hand. |
| Its quiet intensity was a herald, though the immediate future held different prospects. While still at the Slade, Hunt met and married Peter Atkins, a sculpture student who left to become an assistant in Henry Moore's studio in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. Another assistant, there was Anthony Caro, whose friendship with Olitski no doubt provided an introduction for Hunt when she went to New York. | Its quiet intensity was a herald, though the immediate future held different prospects. While still at the Slade, Hunt met and married Peter Atkins, a sculpture student who left to become an assistant in Henry Moore's studio in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. Another assistant, there was Anthony Caro, whose friendship with Olitski no doubt provided an introduction for Hunt when she went to New York. |
| Caro and his wife, the artist Sheila Girling, became Hunt's lifelong friends. In 1953 Hunt left Britain to be with Atkins in Natal when he took a job at Ndaleni art school near Pietermaritzburg. It was the only art school for black South Africans, yet excluded women, so although Hunt was restricted to occasional stints helping out with teaching, she ran a campaign to persuade the authority to admit female students, and succeeded. | Caro and his wife, the artist Sheila Girling, became Hunt's lifelong friends. In 1953 Hunt left Britain to be with Atkins in Natal when he took a job at Ndaleni art school near Pietermaritzburg. It was the only art school for black South Africans, yet excluded women, so although Hunt was restricted to occasional stints helping out with teaching, she ran a campaign to persuade the authority to admit female students, and succeeded. |
| Hunt was born in Reading, the daughter of a builder, the fourth child in a family of seven. Though not a Roman Catholic, she went to the local convent school, became tennis champion and head girl, and won a prize at the annual Royal Drawing Society exhibition. But art was considered an inferior occupation. It was only after training to become a teacher, but having to give the profession up because of a heart murmur, did she gain her life's desire with the place at the Slade. | Hunt was born in Reading, the daughter of a builder, the fourth child in a family of seven. Though not a Roman Catholic, she went to the local convent school, became tennis champion and head girl, and won a prize at the annual Royal Drawing Society exhibition. But art was considered an inferior occupation. It was only after training to become a teacher, but having to give the profession up because of a heart murmur, did she gain her life's desire with the place at the Slade. |
| Back in Britain from South Africa in 1959 she turned to a powerful, almost violent, form of abstraction with a suggestion of plant forms and regeneration and birth. During this period she showed at the Drian Gallery in London, prompting the poet and critic Herbert Read to write of her: "I am full of admiration for what you achieve," which he took to be "an inner vision of reality". So it was. She had gone into analysis as a follower of Carl Jung's belief that integration of personality, the conscious with the unconscious, was the path to the wholly realised individual. | Back in Britain from South Africa in 1959 she turned to a powerful, almost violent, form of abstraction with a suggestion of plant forms and regeneration and birth. During this period she showed at the Drian Gallery in London, prompting the poet and critic Herbert Read to write of her: "I am full of admiration for what you achieve," which he took to be "an inner vision of reality". So it was. She had gone into analysis as a follower of Carl Jung's belief that integration of personality, the conscious with the unconscious, was the path to the wholly realised individual. |
| Hunt was divorced after her return from New York, but in 1997 she met Alistair Ewen, a fellow artist, when he was looking at one of her paintings in a group show. They became partners for the rest of her life. She is survived by the twin daughter and son from her marriage and by three grandchildren. | |
| • Georgina Hunt, artist, born 15 June 1922; died 16 April 2012 | • Georgina Hunt, artist, born 15 June 1922; died 16 April 2012 |