Albert Irvin

Who is Albert Irvin?

Albert Henry Thomas Irvin OBE is an English abstract expressionist painter.

During World War II, he was evacuated from London, and upon returning, went to study at the Northampton School of Art between 1940 and 1941, before being conscripted into the Royal Air Force as a navigator. When the war was over, he resumed his course at Goldsmiths College from 1946 to 1950, where he would later go onto to teach between 1962 and 1983.

Irvin would later go onto win a major Arts Council Award in 1975 and a Gulbenkian Award for printmaking in 1983.

His work is widely exhibited both in the United Kingdom, as well as abroad in such places as Arts Council of Great Britain, Birmingham City Art Gallery, the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Contemporary Art Society, Manchester City Art Gallery, Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Warwick University Arts Centre.

His influences include Walter Sickert, Henri Matisse, JMW Turner, Jack Smith and Edward Middleditch.

Irvin was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to the visual arts.