Rebecca Salter (born 1955) is a British abstract artist who lives and works in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. Previously elected Keeper in 2017, she was elected as the first female President of the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purp ...

in London on 10 December 2019. Formerly a ceramicist, she is best known as

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed techniqu ...

. Salter specialises in

woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is creat ...

, combining Western and Eastern traditions. She has written two books on Japanese wood blocks: ''Japanese Woodblock'' (2001)Japanese Woodblock (2001)
/ref> and ''Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards'' (2006).Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards (2006)
/ref>

Education

Rebecca Salter trained at

Bristol Polytechnic The University of the West of England (also known as UWE Bristol) is a public research university, located in and around Bristol, England. The institution was know as the Bristol Polytechnic in 1970; it received university status in 1992 and ...

, graduating in 1977. According to Gillian Forrestor, George Rainer, Salter's teacher at Bristol, motivated his students to not be confined to their desired mediums, but to use the opportunity of university to experiment. Salter enjoyed the freedom to engage with mixed medias and practices, which has become an integral part of her ongoing practice. In 1979, Salter received a

Leverhulme The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...

Scholarship enabling her to become a research student at

Kyoto City University of Arts is a public, municipal university of general art and music in Kyoto, Japan. Established in 1880, it is Japan's oldest university of the arts (the predecessor of Tokyo University of the Arts was founded in 1887). Among its faculty and graduate ...

in Japan until 1981. She studied traditional Japanese woodblock printing with professor Kurosaki Akira.

Work

Salter lived and worked in Japan from 1979 to 1985. This move changed the nature of her work significantly, having an impact not only on her palette but on her artistic practice also. She began working more with two-dimensional works, creating pieces that complicate the relationship between painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. Her earliest, ''Untitled B119'' (1981), is a suite of woodblock prints on paper, stained with

persimmon The persimmon is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus ''Diospyros''. The most widely cultivated of these is the Oriental persimmon, '' Diospyros kaki'' ''Diospyros'' is in the family Ebenaceae, and a number of non-pe ...

juice, to give the impression of age, reminiscent of Japanese wab. She also studied calligraphy in the evenings, which she learnt was more than merely drawing lines but about dynamic movement. Arriving back in London, in 1985, Salter took up painting on canvas. Though she was no longer a ceramicist, she continued to view her practice as “making an object” rather than a surface. Her time in Japan continued to prevail through this new medium. Calligraphic traditions can be seen through the lines in ''Untitled RR21'' (2009), which Sadako Okhi suggests is reminiscent of a lily pond by

Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

, where the lilies have been replaced by

killifish A killifish is any of various oviparous (egg-laying) cyprinodontiform fish (including families Aplocheilidae, Cyprinodontidae, Fundulidae, Profundulidae and Valenciidae). All together, there are 1,270 species of killifish, the biggest famil ...

. She won the

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...

award in 1995 and the Cheltenham Open Drawing award in 1997. In 2009, Salter worked on the refurbishment of

St George's Hospital St George's Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Tooting, London. Founded in 1733, it is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals and one of the largest hospitals in Europe. It is run by the St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundatio ...

Tooting Tooting is a district in South London, forming part of the London Borough of Wandsworth and partly in the London Borough of Merton. It is located south south-west of Charing Cross. History Tooting has been settled since pre-Saxon times. ...

, south London, in collaboration with architects Gibberd. The refurbishment demonstrated her engagement with the Japanese concepts of space and her belief in the therapeutic value of art. Salter said: :“For my inspiration as to how to transform the new main entrance into a special place, I turned to aspects of Japanese art and architecture which have influenced me since studying there earlier in my career. The most important spatial concept I wanted to introduce was an intuitive way of navigating using light and texture. I hope that anyone arriving at the perimeter of the site will no longer need to study a map for directions.” Salter has twice (2003, 2011) been artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation,

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

, where she envisaged her work would be a tribute to

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

’ practice. Salter exhibits regularly in London, and internationally. In 2011, she had her first major museum retrospective, ''Into the light of things'', at the

Yale Center for British Art Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

, Connecticut. It was more than a conventional retrospective of a single artist's work; it was a sustained investigation of the centrality of drawing to art making and of the notion of a dialogue between Eastern and Western aesthetics, artistic practice, and architecture. Although Salter's influence from her travels are clear, Salter prefers not to travel needlessly to reserve more time for working in her studio. Despite this, Salter does believe that artists should be able to work in any environment.

Royal Academy of Arts

In 2014, Salter was elected as a Royal Academician by the

in London. In 2017, she was elected as Keeper of the Royal Academy, with the responsibility of guiding the RA Schools. She was elected as the first female President of the Royal Academy on 10 December 2019. She will continue to hold the position of Keeper until an election is held to appoint a new Keeper of the RA Schools in 2020.

Selected exhibitions

'' Multiple Thoughts: Artists Make Prints'', The Keeper's House, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 2018
'' One Year Anniversary Show'', Galerie Pugliese Levi, Berlin, Germany, 2018
'' Memories Arrested in Space'', The Italian Cultural Institute of London and ARTUNER.com, 2018
'' The Realm of Objects and Ideas '', ARTUNER.com, 2018
'' In Praise of Shadows '', Cassina Projects, NYC and ARTUNER.com, 2017
'' Into the Light of Things '', Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut, USA, 2011
'' Pale Remembered '', Beardsmore Gallery, London, UK, 2009
'' The Unguiet Gaze '', Howard Scott Gallery, New York, USA, 2007
'' Bliss of Solitude '', Beardsmore Gallery, London, UK, 2006
LINE, Fosterart, London, UK, 2004

Selected bibliography

* 2001 ''Japanese Woodblock Printing'', A & C Black. * 2006 ''Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards'', University of Hawaii Press.

References