Bryan Wynter (1915-1975)

Monumental

In 1945 Wynter moved to a remote cottage at Zennor a few miles from St Ives. He was involved in the St Ives art scene as a founder member of the Crypt Group and the Penwith Society of Artists. In his early career Wynter was fascinated by Surrealism's emphasis on reaching the unconscious mind through dreams, hallucinations and automatism. This was a lasting influence on his work and one he shared with the American Abstract Expressionists.

During the 1950s Wynter experimented with the drug mescalin as a way to bypass the conscious mind and experience 'true seeing'. This resulted in a complete change in style seen in a series of paintings made from 1956 onwards that includes Monumental. Although on the face of it these are abstract works, their origins in the unconscious meant that figures and other recognisable features sometimes appeared in the paintings.

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