MASTERPIECES FROM THE BEN URI COLLECTION
PETER HOWSON (1958-)
PETER HOWSON
Peter Howson’s Holocaust Crowd Scene II (2004) stands as a deeply visceral and confrontational expression of collective trauma, rendered in his unmistakable figurative idiom Continuing his engagement with themes of suffering, oppression and moral reckoning, the painting confronts the viewer with an overwhelming crowd of emaciated, despairing prisoners clad in striped uniforms and branded with yellow stars pressed ttogether in a claustrophobic space lit by a harsh, interrogative light. A Nazi guard, marked with a swastika armband, points to the right, enforcing division and selection, echoing the infamous “selections” upon arrival at concentration camps. The figures are contorted in anguish: a man lifts a baby to the sky in a futile plea; others slump, kneel, or twist in torment Howson’s expressionist brushwork, angular forms, and murky palette evoke both the horror and chaos of the Holocaust, while flames and barbed wire in the background reinforce the setting as a death camp The theatrical scale and emotional intensity recall religious martyrdom scenes, imbuing the work with tragic universality Drawing upon his experience as a war artist in Bosnia, Howson channels his capacity for depicting atrocity with unflinching honesty. Holocaust Crowd Scene II functions not only as testimony but as a moral indictment an insistence on memory in the face of unspeakable violence
Painter, printmaker and muralist Peter Howson was born in London, England on 27 March 1958 to Scottish parents and moved with his family to Prestwick, Ayrshire at the age of four. He studied at Glasgow School of Art (1975–77), alongside fellow students Steven Campbell, Ken Currie and Adrian Wiszniewski Afterwards,
served in the army and travelled widely, before returning in 1979 to complete a Masters Between 1982 and 1983 he painted murals for the Feltham Community Association in London, prior to becoming artist-in-residence at the University of St Andrews (1985), and also a part-time tutor at Glasgow School of Art He won the Arthur Andersen Purchase Award at Compass Gallery, Glasgow (1986) and the Henry Moore Foundation award (1988), going on to become a central figure in the school of Scottish figurative painting; his work in this period reflects the economic deprivations of Scottish contemporary life in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1992 he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to record the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and was appointed official British war artist for Bosnia in 1993, producing a number of highly emotive, sometimes controversial paintings recording the violence of war
His largescale painting entitled The Massacre of Srebrenica is on loan to Glasgow Museums for an initial three year period Other commissions include Scottish Opera’s production of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (2001) and the newly instated Saint of the Catholic Church, John Ogilvie for St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow (2012), the subject of a BBC documentary He has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. His solo exhibitions include a retrospective at McLellan Galleries, Glasgow (1993), Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow, (1999), Flowers West, Santa Monica, California (2001), Flowers Central (2002), Stations of the Cross, Flowers East (2003), a print retrospective, Flowers Graphics (2004), Phlegethon, Flowers Cork Street (2021), and Lacrimae Rerum, Flowers Hong Kong (2022) His upcoming exhibition, When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65, runs at City Art Centre, Edinburgh (May-Oct 2023) Peter Howson was awarded the Lord Provost’s Medal, Glasgow, in 1995, and the following year was made Doctor of Letters, Honoras Causa, by the University of Strathclyde He was appointed OBE in 2009. His work is held in numerous UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, Tate and the V&A, and abroad in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
COLLECTION: https://benuri org/collections/
BURU: https://www buru org uk/
