"Full of Nervous Life": Rediscovering Keith Cunningham

A virtual HENI Art Club event, at which Dr Laura Spada introduced the life and work of the extraordinary Australian artist Keith Cunningham (1929-2014). Spada recounted Cunningham’s unusual story; a contemporary of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff at the Royal College of Art in the mid-1950s, the artist achieved early success before making the extraordinary decision in 1967 to withdraw completely from the art world. On his death in 2014, at the age of 85, Cunningham had left behind a large collection of unseen works spanning over five decades. A concurrent show in Newport Street Gallery revealed the artworks left in Cunningham’s studio, which Spada’s talk explored further. The powerful paintings, whose strokes of dark pigments convey intensely expressive forms, provide a unique insight into the rich inner world of this forgotten artist.