Summer Exhibition 2009

Gordon house 1932 - 2004

Click on image to see full details of each work

Gordon House was an artist-designer of great creativity. His myriad images were sought after by leading galleries, artists and musicians for well over 40 years.

House ranks with notable artist-designers, such as E. McKnight Kauffer, Misha Black, Abram Games, Ashley Havinden, F.H.K Henrion and Tom Eckersley, who defined how we saw things in Britain in the 20th century. He was both admired and liked by his peers, an innate modesty preventing his name being widely known outside his chosen field.

Gordon House was born in Pontardarwe, south Wales, in 1932, the older of two sons of a painter and decorator, Stanley House, and his wife Katie. Modern art seen on a visit to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea with his grandmother steered the young Gordon towards his career. His family was encouraging when he earned a place at Luton and St Albans Schools of Art in 1947.

House had then to earn a living, lacking the means to paint and show at whim. His development over the next decade was a tribute to his single-mindedness. From 1950 until 1952, House worked in an advertising agency and as assistant to the Austrian artist Theador Kern, during the 1950s commissioned by the monks of Buckfast Abbey and others to create ecclesiastical sculpture. House liked all such techniques. The sculptor's way with materials was squirrelled away, to be drawn on again when in 1995 House returned to sculpture, producing Objects, a singular series of bronzes.

Employment as a designer for the plastics division of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) from 1952 until 1959 extended House's knowledge. He collaborated with writers working on a vast range of technical journals and became familiar with industrial moulding techniques and fabrication. House was eventually transferred to work at ICI's head office as a graphic designer to Kynock Press, engaged on pre-press work. He became widely knowledgeable about all aspects of type and printing, and was aware of the changes that were about to revolutionise the industry.

House remained fascinated by the potential of the new technologies. Not long before he died he wrote that "we stand on the threshold of endless technical possibilities extending the whole field of image presentation. It is inevitable that new directions will be sought."

Alongside his day job, House produced his own work, showing with the London Group in 1957. The 1960s witnessed his increasing involvement with the vibrant new British art scene; he took part in the key Situation exhibition at the RBA Galleries and designed its eye-opening catalogue.

In 1955 he married Jo Hull, who would act as his secretary as well as bringing up the family. From 1961, he went freelance, and so remained. At first, times were lean. Living in north London, House would walk to the West End to meet potential clients to save the fare.

In 1961-64, he taught part-time at the Central, Hornsey and several out-of-London art schools. Back from the classroom, he would roll up the carpet in the bedsitter where he and Jo lived and paint until he dropped.

Over the years, House was involved in a string of important exhibitions, from New Painting in England, at Leverkusen Museum, West Germany, in 1961, to The Sixties Art Scene in London, at the Barbican Centre, 1993, and was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, designing its catalogues. His numerous design clients ranged from top London dealers such as Eskenazi, Richard Green, Marlborough Fine Art and Waddington, through the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His strength was that while he would farm out parts of a job, clients knew that House would personally draw the whole package together.

Gordon House was a driven man, a workaholic who produced unique and unmistakable images, apparently abstract, but leaning heavily on visual sources. His work is held by key public and corporate collections in Britain and abroad. Good examples were seen in his 1961-68 print retrospective at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn Museum, New York; in his Ashmolean solo exhibition in 1993-94; and in his subsequent privately produced Catalogue of Editions 1982-1996.

House's "stumbling, endless task of self-analysis" continued to the end. He insisted that a colleague come in to complete a final, untitled edition of prints which employed new signwriting techniques.

David Buckman

Taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/gordon-house-549704.html

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