Geoffrey Wickham; artist (blind!)
Hyfler/Rosner
An artist expressive in paint, sculpture and Japanese
drawing
Brian Bunting
Tuesday May 3, 2005
Guardian
Geoffrey Wickham, who has died aged 85, was an artist and
teacher whose creative drive led him to explore a range of
techniques from painting to sculpture, mosaic and
Japanese-style sumi-e brush drawing. It is his sculpture,
however, for which he will be best remembered.
Born in Wembley, northwest London, Geoffrey showed a visual
curiosity in everything and everyone from an an early age;
even as a child, he would say, "I want to be an artist". He
attended Latymer upper school, Hammersmith, followed by
Willesden School of Art.
A period in a commercial studio followed until the second
world war, when he joined the Forestry Commission before
moving to the NCC Pioneer Corps and the Royal Army Ordnance
Corps. He subsequently served with REME radar in north
Africa and Italy, transferring in 1945 to the Royal Army
Education Corps with the Queen's Own Cameroon Highlanders in
Austria and Italy.
Leaving the services in 1946, Geoffrey took with him dozens
of drawings of fellow soldiers, scenes from army life and
continental landscapes, some of which were later purchased
by the National Army museum.
He then gained a place on the Royal College of Art (RCA)
postgraduate course, and, three years later, took a
part-time post in the architecture school at the Regent
Street Polytechnic (now Westminster University). He stayed
there for 21 years, teaching student architects drawing,
spatial design and the use of colour. He became a full-time
senior lecturer in 1951, and established a team of artists
from diverse fields within the school to support the
teaching process.
Throughout this period, Geoffrey continued to paint, sculpt
and write for various publications. Many portraits and
figure compositions also feature in his work from this time,
as do landscapes, with inspiration coming from the wilds of
Pembrokeshire, where he had aquired a rundown shack. From
1950 to 1982, he was a member of the British colour group of
the Physical Society.
From the early 1960s, Geoffrey was increasingly commissioned
to produce sculptures for buildings both in the UK and
abroad, often working in close collaboration with
architects. His work, formed using clay for bronze casting,
heat-formed polystyrene for aluminium casting and ceramics,
as well as concrete and fibreglass, can be seen in offices
in Ludgate Hill and Motcombe Street, in London, Sutton,
Newmarket, Swindon, Egham, France, Germany, Bahrain and
Lagos; other examples are held in private collections
throughout the world.
Between 1960 and 1980, Geoffrey was also a visiting lecturer
at the RCA and the Architectural Association, and found time
to write Rapid Perspective (1967). In 1965, he was elected
to the Royal Society of British Sculptors (RBS), becoming a
fellow the following year. A major sculpture, the
Fountainhead, installed behind Sotheby's auction rooms in
Belgravia, won the RBS silver medal in 1972 for the most
distinguished sculpture in London.
In 1970, Geoffrey moved to the Sir John Cass School of Art,
part of the City of London Polytechnic, as principal
lecturer in fine art, later becoming head of the deparment
until his retirement in 1982.
There followed a period, from 1982 to 1986, in Kyoto, Japan,
which he spent painting, woodblock printing, sculpting,
exhibiting and lecturing. This sojourn was the fulfilment of
a wish to explore Japanese art that changed his outlook on
life and art. He adopted the nom de plume Hajime, meaning
beginner, and incorporated this into his seal mark on his
subsequent work in Japan.
Returning to Britain in 1986, he settled in
Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, where, with his third wife, the
artist Akiko Fujikawa, he worked in a converted Methodist
church. His sensitive and spontaneous sumi-e drawings in
ink, capturing the spirit and vitality of life with minimal,
yet expressive, gestures of the brush, date from this time.
Work from this period, including some terracotta sculptures,
was later exhibited in Germany and Finland.
Geoffrey was registered as totally blind in 1996, and did
not work for three years. But in 1998, with David Reading,
he constructed a large figure with a bird in its hand. After
that, with the help of an assistant, Greta Levins, he
produced a series of abstract paintings, using a single,
close-up lens. In 1999, he had a one-man show at the Daiwa
Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London. An exhibition of his
drawings from 1990-1995 can be seen at the Burnham museum
until June 12.
Akiko, and four of his five sons, survive him.
· Geoffrey Earle Wickham, artist, born July 10 1919; died
March 27 2005
Hyfler/Rosner
Sculptor, painter and teacher
23 May 2005
Geoffrey Earle Wickham, sculptor and painter: born Wembley,
Middlesex 10 July 1919; Principal Lecturer, Fine and Applied
Art Department, Sir John Cass School of Art 1970-82; three
times married (four sons, and one son deceased); died
Chelmsford, Essex 27 March 2005.
The art of the sculptor and painter Geoffrey Wickham
traversed a broad spectrum of objective work from life,
abstract constructions, relief, work in clay, paintings in
vivid colour and drawings in mixed media, with a particular
interest in using new materials and techniques.
He was born in Wembley, Middlesex, in 1919. At nine years of
age he was already demonstrating a close affinity with the
visual arts, through drawings and paintings which were of
very high standard in one so young. He attended the
Willesden School of Art between but put on hold any further
art education owing to military conscription.
His Second World War service began in 1940 in the Forestry
Commission, followed by the NCC Pioneer Corps and the Royal
Army Ordnance Corps. In 1943, he joined the Royal Electrical
and Mechanical Engineers (in 1944 he was based in North
Africa and Italy), and in 1945 the Royal Army Education
Corps with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. He produced
dozens of drawings over the war period of fellow servicemen,
observations and sketches of army life and landscapes made
in Italy and Austria. In 1946, after his demobilisation, he
was able to retrieve much of his graphic work, with many
examples being purchased by the National Army Museum. His
experience with the complex diagrams of radar circuitry was
also to reappear in an entirely different context of his
experimental artwork in the 1950s and 1960s.
So too might his contact with the Royal Army Education Corps
have initiated his long-term future as an educationist - a
passionate and compulsive teacher who used to say to
students and colleagues alike: "I'm a teacher. Touch me and
I will talk forever."
Soon after leaving the forces Wickham gained a place at the
Royal College of Art and in 1949 was awarded his ARCA in
Fine Art (Painting). A period as a visiting lecturer was
followed by a part-time lectureship and then a full-time
position - the well-trodden pathway of the artist/academic.
In 1951, he became Senior Lecturer in charge of the Visual
Studies Department in the School of Architecture at the
Regent Street Polytechnic (which later became the Central
London Polytechnic and is now the University of
Westminster). Many of his students, now professional
architects, have paid tribute to Wickham's teaching, his
energy and encouragement and not least, to his approach,
which as a painter/sculptor opened up new ways of seeing,
tangential at that time, to courses in architecture.
In 1965, he was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of
British Sculptors and in 1967 a Fellow. He was an active and
imaginative member of the RBS and worked closely with
Michael Rizzello, the former RBS president, who was both
colleague and friend. Wickham involved himself in all
aspects of promoting sculpture and in 1972 was awarded the
RBS Silver Medal for the "Most Distinguished Sculpture in
London", his Fountainhead commissioned by Sotheby's in
Belgravia.
From 1970, he was the Principal Lecturer in charge of the
Fine and Applied Art Department at the Sir John Cass School
of Art, a faculty of the City of London Polytechnic (now the
Metropolitan University). He was, in many respects, a
polytechnic man. The interaction which took place between
scientists and artists under the same roof appealed to him.
He was erudite and articulate, and his arguments were
robust, and therefore he was well placed to promote and at
times defend the value of a visual education.
Throughout his time at the Sir John Cass, until his
retirement as the Head of the Fine Art Department in 1982,
Wickham made it his concern to place students not only in
the most appropriate courses but, where possible, with the
teachers who would best benefit the student at every level
of their development. He was a champion of the
inter-disciplinary school of thought, encouraging students
to move their ideas across the specialisms. He encouraged
students to look, study and experiment, believing that the
intellect was very much part of the visual equation.
Wickham himself was always ready to experiment with
materials. His "lost polystyrene" works cast in aluminium
are a case in point, as are pieces using reinforced concrete
and prefabricated elements. On one occasion, after he had
broken his leg in a motorcycle accident and was confined to
a hospital bed, I took him a set of miniature tools for
carving and cutting balsa-wood blocks. He produced several
models for later full-size works and filled his hospital bed
with fine wood-chips - this was not appreciated at the time
by the nursing staff, but he left the hospital able to walk
again and with fresh ideas for sculptures.
In 1981, Geoffrey Wickham met the artist Akiko Fujikawa in
London and they were married in Kyoto, Japan, the following
year (she was his third wife). For four years they lived in
Kyoto and Geoffrey was able to bring to fruition a lifelong
desire to study Japanese art first-hand. The mass of the
lump and the delicacy of the line had been one of his
preoccupations for years and his time in Japan was the kind
of rebirth which many artists seek in later years but often
cannot find. He became a student again and learned how to
use pen and ink and brushes, which are so responsive as to
echo feeling as well as decision-making.
Through Akiko and Kyoto, Geoffrey Wickham filled the next
two decades of his creative journey, changing and finding a
new plastic philosophy. He worked constantly in his
Burnham-on-Crouch studio in Essex and, even though hampered
by progressive blindness, continued to work with the aid of
a close-up lens and by pointing out instructions to his
assistant Greta Levins.
Some of his works on paper can be seen at Burnham Museum
until 12 June.
Clive Duncan