SOARING FLIGHT - - PETER LANYON'S GLIDING PAINTINGS

Peter Lanyon (1918-1964) is one of Britain's most important and original post-war artists. He created a new vision of landscape painting for the modern era based on a profound engagement with the tough coastal environment of his native West Cornwall. At the end of the 1950s Lanyon extended and transformed his painting by embarking upon a new way of experiencing this landscape. He began gliding. Lanyon poured his gliding experiences into his art, producing paintings that offer a thrilling sense of his encounters with the land, sea and air, collapsing the multiple perspectives of his flights into each new composition. This catalogue accompanies the first major exhibition devoted to Lanyon's gliding paintings. It offers a new account of the works and highlights their importance as a unique achievement of twentieth-century art.