William Turnbull
William Turnbull (b. 1922, Dundee, Scotland; d. 2012, London) was a key figure in international modernism who changed the trajectory of postwar British art. After serving as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, traveling to Sri Lanka and India during World War II, Turnbull enrolled in London’s Slade School of Fine Art. Uninspired by British art education, he moved to Paris in 1948, where he would mix with avant-gardists like Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brâncuși. Returning to London in 1950, Turnbull began creating plaster sculptures and casting them in bronze; these works often use line to suggest the body in motion, as do paintings and drawings made during this period. After showing at the 1952 Venice Biennale with Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, and other young British sculptors, Turnbull became known as part of a generation of artists referred to as the “Geometry of Fear” group, whose angular forms were understood as expressions of postwar anxiety. As fellow artist Anthony Gormley observed, however, Turnbull did not engage the same darkness, instead continuing to strike out an independent path. Sculptures from the rest of the ’50s referenced Ancient Greek and Cycladic figures and archeological objects; these works are marked by his simultaneous interest in mass, balance, and surface. At the same time, he was an active participant alongside Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi in London’s Independent Group, who challenged the conservative modernism of British art by infusing their work with references to mass culture and the everyday. In tandem with his sculptures, Turnbull maintained a vital painting practice that evolved from pared-back figuration to gestural abstraction at the turn of the 1950s. His work became increasingly geometric in the 1960s as he integrated metal, plexiglass, and industrial production techniques into his sculptures and began to structure his paintings around flat planes of color and hard edges. In 1973, an acclaimed Turnbull retrospective at London’s Tate Gallery cemented his position as a leading figure in British art. In the following decades, the artist continued to explore symbols, balance, and form through bronzes that evoked knives, leaves, horse heads, and other elemental forms.
Turnbull has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (2019); Tate Britain, London (2006, 1973); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2005, 1992); Serpentine Gallery, London (1995); Hayward Gallery, London (1968); Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan (1963); and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1957), among others. His work is in the permanent collections of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Kunsthalle Manheim, Germany; Leeds Museums and Galleries, United Kingdom; The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery, Scotland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Sintra Museum the Arts, Lisbon; Stanford University, California; Tate, London; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; and University of California Los Angeles, among others.
William Turnbull in studio c.1950. Photo by John Deakin
Born 1922, Dundee, Scotland
Died 2011, London
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026
Karma, New York, Origins (1946–1959)
2025
Axel Vervoordt, Antwerp, William Turnbull, Paintings 1959–1962
2022
Offer Waterman, London, William Turnbull: Centenary Exhibition
2021
Offer Waterman, London, William Turnbull: Figures and Natural Forms
2019
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, William Turnbull: Head, Mask, Horse
2012
Chatsworth House and Garden, Bakewell, United Kingdom, William Turnbull at Chatsworth
2010
Waddington Galleries, London, William Turnbull: Beyond Time
2006
Tate Britain, London
2005
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, United Kingdom, William Turnbull: Retrospective 1946–1962
2002
Galerie Thomas, Munich, William Turnbull: Skuplturen
1995
Serpentine Gallery, London, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Paintings
1992
Galeria Freites, Caracas
Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin, William Turnbull, New Sculpture
Galerie von Braunbehrens, Munich
Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, United Kingdom
1990
Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, Sculpture in the Close: An Exhibition of the Works of William Turnbull1988
Terry Dintenfass Inc, New York
John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco
1981
The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
1973
Tate Gallery, London, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting
1970
Waddington Galleries, London
1968
Hayward Gallery, London
1966
Newport Harbour Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, California, William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting
1965
Gallerie Müller, Stuttgart, Germany, Turnbull: Bider 1960–1964
1963
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, Turnbull
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
1960
Molton Gallery, London
1957
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, William Turnbull: New Sculpture and Paintings
1952
William Turnbull, Hanover Gallery, London
Group Exhibitions
2023
Mead Gallery, Warwick Art Centre, United Kingdom, Phantom Sculpture
2020
Galerie Thomas, Munich, Modern and Contemporary Sculptures
2019
Karsten Schubert, London, Dialectical Materialism: Aspects of British Sculpture since the 1960s
2016
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, Modernism and Memory: Rhoda Pritzker and the Art of Collecting
2012
Alan Wheatley Art, London, Modern British Sculpture: Fanning the Flames
2008
Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The Fran and Ray Stark Collection of 20th-Century Sculpture at the J. Paul Getty Museum
2004
Tate Britain, London, Art and the Sixties: This Was Tomorrow
2002
Barbican Art Gallery, London, Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, Blast to Freeze: British Art in the 20th Century
2000
Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, Welded Sculpture of the Twentieth Century
1997
David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, From Blast to Pop: Aspects of Modern British Art, 1915–1965
1996
Galerie National de Jeu de Paume, Paris, Un siècle de sculpture anglaise
1992
Tate Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom, New Realities, Art in Western Europe 1945–1968
Artcurial, Paris, 4 sculpteurs anglais: Armitage, Caro, Chadwick, Turnbull
1990
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty (traveled to IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; University Art Museum, University of California Berkeley; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York, 1991)
1987
Royal Academy of Arts, London, British Art in the Twentieth Century: The Modern Movement (traveled to Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany)
1986
Tate Gallery, London, Forty Years of Modern Art, 1945–1985
New Art Centre, London, British Sculpture 1950–1965
1984
National Museum Art Gallery, Singapore, Kim Lim and William Turnbull
1981
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century: Part 2: Symbol and Imagination 1951–1980
1977
Royal Academy of Arts, London, British Painting: 1952-77
1976
Hayward Gallery, London, The Human Clay
1968
Kassel, Germany, Documenta 4
Arts Council Gallery, London, Sculpture in the City
XIX Olimpiada Festival Internacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Artistas Británicos, Nuevas Tendencias
1966
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, New Shapes of Colour
1965
Tate Gallery, London, British Sculpture in the Sixties
Kunsthalle Basel, Signale
New School Art Center, New York, Sculpture from the Albert A. List Family Collection
1964
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Guggenheim International
Tate Gallery, London, 54–64: Painting and Sculpture of a Decade
1962
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Modern Sculpture from the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection
San Francisco Museum of Art, British Art Today (traveled to Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts, Texas, 1963; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, 1963)
Instituto T. di Tella, Buenos Aires, Premio internacional de escultura
1958
Arts Council of Great Britain, London, Contemporary British Sculpture: An Open Air Exhibition
New York Art Foundation, Rome, New Trends in British Art
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Carnegie International
1956
Whitechapel Gallery, London, This is Tomorrow
1952
XXVI Venice Biennale, British Pavilion, New Aspects of British Sculpture
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Young Sculptors
1951
Riverside Museum, New York, American Abstract Artists 15th Annual Exhibition
1950
Galerie Maeght, Paris, Les mains éblouies
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1950: Aspects of British Art
Public Collections
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Arts Council Collection, London
Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Lisbon
British Council Collection, London
Contemporary Art Society, London
Smart Museum of Art
University of California Los Angeles
Glasgow Museum and Art Gallery
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Hull University Art Collection, Kingston-upon-Hull, United Kingdom
The Hunterian, Glasgow
Jesus College, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Leeds Museums and Galleries
The McManus: Dundee’s Museum and Art Gallery
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Anderson Collection at Stanford University, California
Museum & Art Gallery Swindon, United Kingdom
Tate, London
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada
Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool, United Kingdom
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2022
William Turnbull: International Modern Artist
London: Lund Humphries, 2022
2005
The Sculpture of William Turnbull
London: Lund Humphries
1973
William Turnbull: Sculpture and Painting
London: Tate
