Painter and sculptor William Turnbull is born in 1922 in Dundee, Scotland. From 1939 to 1941, he works as an illustrator in Dundee and from 1946 to 1948, he studies art at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. At the end of the 1940s he stays in Paris, where he meets Giacometti and Brancusi, amongst others, and produces his first works. He returns to London, where he is a visiting artist from 1953 to 1961 at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. From 1964 to 1972, he teaches sculpture there.
In 1952, under the motto ‘New Aspects of British Sculpture’, Turnbull represents Great Britain with other prominent British sculptors at the Venice Biennale. In 1968, he participates in the fourth Documenta in Kassel.
According to the Tate Gallery, Turnbull’s most abiding concern is with the totemic: many of his sculptures show his fascination for the ancient cultures. Everything he makes has an aesthetic and intellectual elegance, and involves the exploration of the fundamentals of sculpture itself. Later, he feels his sculptures are too theoretical. From 1953, Turnbull is primarily concerned with surface. Randomness becomes an important characteristic of his sculpture. He pushes found objects into clay molds, so that an element of chance is present in the final image.
In 2012, Turnbull dies in London.
