Keith Sutton

Keith George Sutton (29 May 1924 – 26 July 1991) was a British artist and critic

Keith Sutton was born in Dulwich on 29 May 1924, the younger son of George William Sutton and Audrey Pearl Dewar. He was educated at Rutlish School, Merton, leaving at age 16 to attend Wimbledon School of Art. Called up into the RNVR in July 1943, he served until January 1947 as acting sub-lieutenant. On release he returned to Wimbledon until he won the Alfred Rich scholarship to the Slade School in 1948. Fellow students in his year included Martin Froy and Peter Snow, while he formed particular friendships with entrants the following year including Victor Willing and Michael Andrews and, later, Paula Rego. He was awarded the Tonks prize for drawing, gained his Diploma in 1951 and then stayed on for an extra year.

In the 1950s there were few openings for young artists apart from teaching and Sutton took up several such opportunities during the next few years while always continuing to paint and draw. He would sometimes stay with Victor Willing and his first wife Hazel at Shalford, near Guildford and there are landscapes and drawings from there. By 1955 he was writing art criticism for Art News and Review and this continued until 1957.

In February–March 1958 he had his first one-man show at the Galerie de Seine in West Halkin Street. He showed twenty four paintings dating from the previous three or four years as well as a portfolio of drawings. There were favourable reviews and some sales though several paintings remain to the estate. In 1959 he carried out a commission for two glass mosaic murals for the A.E.I. Research Laboratories at Harlow.

At the end of the fifties Sutton was living in University Mansions, Putney and then for a while in the house of Ronald Alley, the art historian, in Deodar Road. Here he produced his first efforts at collage. In 1963 he moved back to central London into a flat in Winchester Road, Swiss Cottage, remaining there until 1967. He continued to write art criticism during the first half of the sixties: for The New Statesman; for The Listener (alternating with David Sylvester) and also, anonymously, for The Times. He wrote several introductions in catalogues of artists' exhibitions: the sculptor George Fullard; Derek Hirst; Thomas Erma, and Trevor Bates. His monograph on Picasso was published in 1962. In 1965 he was put in charge of the arts section of the newly launched magazine London Life, continuing until it ceased publication two years later. He also continued with teaching, now at the Bath Academy, Corsham Court (1963–64).

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