Paul Feiler


Paul Feiler was a German-born artist who was a prominent member of the St Ives School of art: he has pictures hanging in major art galleries across the world.

Early life

Paul Feiler was born in 1918 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany into a cultivated family of lawyers, doctors and liberal politicians; his father was a professor of dentistry. He was educated in Zwolle in the Netherlands and then at Canford School in Dorset, England.
His parents in 1936 moved to London: his father established himself as a dentist in Harley Street. Paul studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London 1936-1939 with artists such as Patrick Heron, Bryan Wynter and Kenneth Armitage. As an enemy alien in 1939, although thoroughly anglicised, he was interned on the Isle of Man and then in Canada. On his return to England in 1941, he was an arts teacher at Eastbourne College, which had been evacuated to Radley College in Oxford.
After World War II, he taught art at the West of England College of Art in Bristol: he became the head of painting there in 1960. In 1975 he moved to the disused chapel in Kerris near Newlyn in Cornwall where he would live until his death.

Artistic career

Feiler’s first solo exhibition was a sell-out at the Redfern Gallery in London in 1953. He had four more exhibitions there in the 1950s.
The Obelisk Gallery in Washington DC in 1954 had the first of several solo exhibitions across America.
Feiler has paintings in many art galleries worldwide including the Tate St Ives, Victoria and Albert Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, Bristol Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and Kettles Yard in Cambridge.
The Tate St Ives had two large solo exhibitions of his work in 1995 and 2005. He worked in his Kerris studio every day until his death in 2013 aged 95.
Paul Feiler married the artist June Miles in 1945: they had two daughters and a son – the marriage was later dissolved. In 1970 Feiler married the artist Catharine Armitage: they had twin sons.

Solo exhibitions[Redfern Gallery], London

1953-57 Redfern Gallery, London
1954, 1958 Obelisk Gallery, Washington DC
1959 Redfern Gallery, London
1961 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
1962, 1965 Grosvenor Gallery, London
1965 Victoria Art Gallery, Bath
1966 Balliol College JCR, Oxford
1966 Clare College JCR, Cambridge
1969 Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh
1969 Sheviock Gallery, Plymouth
1972 Archer Gallery, London
1975 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
1975 St Clements Hall, Mousehole, Cornwall
1977 Wills Lane Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall
1979 Meredith College, NC, USA
1979 Duke University, NC, USA
1981-82 Crawford Centre for the Arts, University of St Andrews and toured to: Alpirsbacher Galerie, Alpirsbach EKG Kunst, Stuttgart
1981-82 John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton
1981-82 Warwick Arts Trust, London: introduction by John Steer
1982 Fayetteville Museum of Art, North Carolina, USA: introduced by Phyllis A McLeod
1993 Redfern Gallery, London: introduction by John Steer
1994 Redfern Gallery, London
1995/96 Retrospective Exhibition, Tate Gallery, St Ives
1996 Redfern Gallery, London
1998 The Rotunda, Hong Kong
1999 Redfern Gallery, London
2002 "Connections", Redfern Gallery, London and Le Cadre, Hong Kong
2002 Redfern Gallery, London
2003 “Works on Paper”, Redfern Gallery, London
2005 Janicon, Redfern Gallery, London
2005 “The Near and The Far”, Tate Gallery, St Ives
2005 Redfern Gallery, London
2005 Tate St. Ives
2007 Redfern Gallery, London
2010 Paul Feiler “Elusive Space”, Redfern Gallery, London
2011 Paul Feiler “A Retrospective”, Lemon Street Gallery, Truro, Cornwall
2013 Paul Feiler “Past and Present”, Redfern Gallery, London
2018 Paul Feiler “Elusive Space: a centenary retrospective”, Redfern Gallery, London

Group exhibitions[Redfern Gallery], London

1949 Young Contemporaries, Arts Council of Great Britain
1952 Bryanston School, Dorset
1952 The Mirror and the Square, AIA New Burlington Galleries
1953 "The Unknown Political Prisoner", ICA West Country Landscapes ACGB
1953 Coronation Exhibition, The Redfern Gallery, London
1953 "Figures in their Setting", Tate Gallery
1953 British Contemporary Paintings, Arts Council Gallery, London
1954 Nine English Painters, Dublin
1954 The Octagon, Bath with Bryan Wynter, Peter Potworowski and Peter Lanyon
1954 "The Seasons", Tate Gallery
1956 Statements - a review of British Abstract art in 1956, ICA, London, curated by Lawrence Alloway
1956 Aspects of contemporary English painting, Parsons Gallery, London
1957 British Abstract Painting, Paris, Milan, Montreal, Melbourne, Sydney
1957 Metavisual, tachiste and abstract painting in England today, Redfern Gallery, London
1957 Dimensions: British abstract art 1948-1957, O'Hana Gallery, London, curated by Lawrence Alloway
1958 British Abstract Painting, Redfern Gallery, London exhibition toured to: Auckland, Liège, Johannesburg, Cape Town
1959 Architect's Choice ICA, London
1959 50 Years of British Painting, CAS exhibition organised by Denis Matthews and shown through the 'Friends of China' in Beijing and Shanghai
1960-61 Contemporary British Landscapes, ACGB touring exhibition
1961 John Moore's Gallery, Liverpool
1961 British Painting in the '60's, Tate Gallery
1961 Arnolfini, Bristol
1964 Peter Lanyon, Hilton, Feiler, Davie, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
1966 British Painting 1950-57 ACGB touring exhibition
1972 Two by seven, Archer Gallery, London
1977 "Cornwall 1945-55", New Art Centre, London
1980 Art in the making, Brewhouse Art Centre, Bristol
1985 St Ives 1939-64: Twenty-five years of painting, sculpture and pottery, Tate Gallery, London, curated by David Brown, introduction by David Lewis
1989 Post-war British abstract art, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London
1999 "Orbis - Towards and Beyond" - A historical exhibition of works done before, during, and after the 1969 moon landing, Redfern Gallery, London
2000 ART 2000 - Redfern Gallery stand devoted entirely to his work.