Phyllida Barlow – British sculptor who rose to worldwide fame after retiring from teaching – has died aged 78

British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, long respected among British artists who taught at London’s Slade School of Fine Art for more than 40 years, has died aged 78.

Her death was confirmed by her gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which said in a statement that “for nearly 60 years, she has embraced humble materials to create sculptures and installations that defied the rules of gravity, light and nature. balance and symmetry. Her work interrupts and invades the space around her, a strategy through which Phyllida playfully guided audiences to become daring explorers.

Isabella Maidment, Senior Curator at Hepworth Wakefield, paid tribute on Twitter, saying: “Inspirational educator, brilliant artist, wonderful woman.” A statement from the Tate meanwhile reads: ‘She was the ‘youngest in spirit’ of the senior artists, working between sculpture and painting, continually experimenting with her practice on a large scale. Throughout this time, she has generously passed on her knowledge to generations of students and countless curators at home and abroad. She was deeply engaged in art stories as an artist and teacher and was always curious about the unknown.

Many other tributes were paid. Andrew Renton, professor of conservation at Goldsmiths College, wrote: “There are generations of artists who owe him so much. But also generations of teachers for whom she was more than a model. She represented a standard of commitment to which we could only aspire.”

Barlow was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1944. Her mother, Brigit Ursula Hope Black, was a writer and her father, Erasmus Darwin Barlow, was a psychiatrist. The sculpture Shedmesh, realized in 1975 for the collective exhibition Contemporary Painting and Sculpture at the Camden Art Center in London, and Fill (1983) – created by piling up material in the disused quarry of Tout in Dorset – are among his early key works.

She attended Chelsea College of Art in London (1960-63) and the Slade School of Fine Art (1963-66). She taught at both schools and was a fine arts teacher and director of undergraduate studies at the latter until 2009, where her students included Rachel Whiteread, Douglas Gordon and Tacita Dean.

Barlow said of his teaching: “I am conscious that I benefited from steady employment in an art school, in its first incarnation as a liberal patron of artists when there was no need to account for your work other than through your contributions as an artist. ”

Her heightened international profile, bolstered by a series of high profile exhibitions, coincided with her retirement from teaching in 2009. In 2011 she was made a Royal Academician, the year she joined Hauser & Wirth Gallery . In 2012 Barlow had solo exhibitions at the New Museum in New York and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, UK. In 2013 she was included in the Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.

In 2014, his large-scale installation, Dock (2014), filled the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain in London. “This production is particularly prodigious given that Barlow’s modus operandi is to create unique sculpture-structures for each location using vigorously manipulated common materials – building boards, sheets of plywood, plastic sheeting, plaster, canvas – to an epic scale”. wrote Louisa Buck who interviewed Barlow for The arts journal in 2014.

Barlow said at the time: “I’ve been asked, ‘Why is your work so important?’ And I think the answer has to do with reach and stretching and going into spaces where I can’t go and where we don’t usually go in terms of research or research.

In 2017 Barlow represented the UK at the Venice Biennale with the large sculptural installation known as Madness. Critic Mark Hudson, writing in the telegraph, said: “At a time when the interpretation of art is increasingly focused on quasi-literary ‘themes’ (the idea that Damien Hirst’s work is about ‘sex and death’ is an excellent example), Barlow considers herself a “formalist”: her work is about processes and materials. Madness is wonderfully comedic and inventive entertainment that throws all sorts of visual jokes and some pretty deep resonances about scale and endurance, mortality and decadence.

When asked why she chose the Madness title, she said The arts journal“It’s playing on the whole idea that the building itself is very insane, but also on the idea of ​​a madness like a kind of human getaway. Also madness as in the sense of mirage, which was actually also one of the titles I considered.

Phillida Barlow; born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on April 4, 1944; AR 2011, ECB 2015, DBE 2021; married Fabian Benedict Peake (three daughters, two sons); passed away on March 13, 2023