Julian Trevelyan

Julian Trevelyan

British artist, founding member of the British Surrealist group in the 1930s, who often infused his work with a sense of humour and fantasy. While attending the University of Cambridge (1928–30), Trevelyan became so impressed by the dreamlike imagery of French Surrealism that he went to Paris to study at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 printmaking studio.

Trevelyan studied print making at the Atelier 17 in Paris from 1931-1935, when he met Picasso, Miro and Masson. He returned to England to become one of the leading exponents of surrealism there and showed at the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936.

In the 1960s Trevelyan traveled to India and the tropics. Impressions of color, light and forms from these adventures were incorporated as subjects for his prints upon this return to the studio. He did not make many prints and his etchings are therefore relatively scarce.

Statement:
“Although my work may seem the essence of Figuration, I owe a great deal to Abstract Art. I have exhibited with the Surrealists, & I have learned a certain discipline from the Cubists and from Abstraction. At the moment it is an intense vision of something concrete that provokes a picture, a place or an occasion. I produce chiefly etchings, but it is though painting that I learned to etch.”
J. Trevelyan, 1969

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