The forthcoming auction Design For Living, on 30th November, features a contemporary patinated bronze, Three Pieces Suite, by Modern British artist, Paul Mount. Here we explore the influences and inspiration which drove him to develop his highly distinctive three dimensional art works
——————————
Three Pieces Suite (created in 1976) has remained in the same hands since it was first bought in the Penwith Society of Arts’ 1979 Spring Exhibition. The patinated bronze is in three distinct parts which can be moved around the bronze base resulting in a number of different compositions. The exhibition guide from 1979 reveals a Who’s Who of Cornish art – abstract sculptor, Denis Mitchell (1912-1993), for many years also Barbara Hepworth’s assistant, the potter Janet Leach (1918-1997), who along with her husband Bernard created the renowned studio in St. Ives and prominent abstract artist, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham – to name just a few. Paul Mount had been based in Nancherrow, within the parish of St Just-in-Penwith, from 1962 after a seven year stint in Nigeria, his time here was transformational and set him on a new artistic course. In light of his eventual assimilation into the Cornish art scene it’s interesting to note that he chose to base himself there as he owned a modest holiday home in the former tin mining town which was purchased before his departure for Africa. The coastal moorland stretching from behind Mount’s cottage heading eastwards as far as St Ives just happened to be the adopted spiritual homeland of a disparate group of artists and sculptors who lived and worked there in the years following the end of the second World War.
Paul Mount, born in 1922, was initially a painter, and from an early age he had made it clear that this was his intention. His study commenced at Paignton School of Art and continued at the Royal College of Art until he was interrupted by the call up to war service in 1941. Mount stayed on in France until 1946 to undertake relief work, and on his return to England he completed his course at the Royal College. His output at the time comprised portraits and urban landscapes – works which have been described as having a Euston Road-ish air. He professed a close affinity with the style of the old masters and felt rather removed from the 20th century avant-garde, possibly his first serious encounter with modern art was in 1948 at a Marc Chagall exhibition held at the Tate which described as simply ‘puzzling’. Upon his graduation the same year he took up a teaching post at Winchester School of Art, he lived in a pretty village close by and his paintings were exhibited in many predictable establishment shows.
In 1955 Mount was offered a post in Lagos, Nigeria, the task was to set up the art department at Yaba Technical Institute, located in a suburb of the city. It’s not clear why he sought a break from his gentle provincial Hampshire life, but the contrast between the two locales must have been striking on every front. Mid 1950s’ Lagos was a dynamic, cosmopolitan capital, politically fired up following the break with its colonial past in 1954 when the country was styled the Federation of Nigeria; the move to full independence was finally agreed in 1958 and made official in late 1960. The palpable energy of Nigeria in this decade was accompanied by the revival of West African culture and art – seen most clearly in Highlife music and a thriving literary scene. Coupled with this was the soon-to-be state’s growing awareness and interest in its pre-colonial artistic heritage, specifically sculpture. From the 12th and possibly the 11th century, Yoruba sculptors and metalworkers had produced sophisticated, technically accomplished bronzes, the likes of which were not seen in Europe until the works of Donatello in the early 15th century. Furthermore, sculpture in Nigeria was invariably integrated into architecture, with this tradition epitomised by the early 20th century work of the woodcarver, Olowe of Ise.
At Yaba, Mount started with an empty building and set about recruiting teachers and attracting students. He quickly abandoned all thought of teaching fine art per se, and focused instead on skills which would provide his students with a living. Having designed and constructed furniture for the workshop, he employed a Benin woodcarver to give instruction and watching the carver at work Mount later re-called the revelation, ‘I had always been interested in sculpture [but] I had never until then thought of doing it myself’. Mount acquired a set of tools and began carving in wood, local supplies of sido, iroko and ebony were plentiful.
Mount’s time in Lagos provided him with the opportunity to observe and absorb the playing out of modernism through the city’s building projects as Lagos sought to become an international capital along the lines of a Western model. His professional profile was strengthened through his innovative work at Yaba and by the early 1960s he was consulting in design and producing large-scale architectural sculpture in concrete – his first piece a screen wall for the Swiss Embassy in Lagos. Mount developed a form of tropical modernism, with an emphasis on the reflection of heat and the need for air to circulate within an interior. He savoured the challenge of combining sculptural forms with adherence to fixed engineering and construction requirements. The aesthetic of airy, but shielded interior spaces, he developed whilst in Nigeria is certainly seen in Three Pieces Suite, albeit on an intimate scale.
Paul Mount left for Lagos as a teacher and painter and in 1962 he settled in Cornwall as an independent sculptor. He advanced his practical skill set by visiting the local foundry, taking arc welding courses from a blacksmith and making use of discarded stainless steel off-cuts from a nearby factory, which he re-fashioned into mobile sculptures. He sketched at Newlyn harbour, but not the boats moored there, rather the fishing gear and equipment. He began to exhibit his sculptures in local shows, but tended to stand apart from the local art community in that he regarded his works as less the expression of self-discovery and more the embodiment of the social fabric still to be found in the post-industrial environment of Penwith.
Right up until his passing, in 2009, Mount experimented with industrial materials, different types of metal and ways of working them. These elements were to absorb and fascinate him far more intensely than the landscape in which he lived. He used cast bronze and iron, spot-welded sheet bronze and stainless steel, and commenting in general on sculpture he said, ‘The process determines the character of the forms’.
Paul Mount was one of the last in a group of British artists whose career was suspended by the second World War, and when he was free to work again he stayed firm to the idea of re-building the world through art. Mount was also a musician, he played the organ and piano, and the title of this work, Three Pieces Suite, was not the only one to allude to musical form and composition – music was often on his mind. He was talking of sculpture when he described it as an art that ‘conditions and organises thin air’, but this could equally also apply to music.