George Claessen (5 May 1909 – 1 May 1999) was a Sri Lankan artist and poet whose art was characterised by his mystical outlook and beliefs. He was a founding member of the

Colombo '43 Group The '43 Group was a 20th-century modern art school established in August 1943 in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then British Ceylon). The group was essentially an association of like-minded artists who had broken away from the Ceylon Society of Arts, led b ...

Biography

Claessen was born in

Colombo Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...

and was a largely self-taught artist who began to paint professionally when, aged 29, he joined the Colombo Port Commission as a draughtsman. In 1943 Claessen was among the founding members of the

, who embraced modern European artistic forms over traditional Sri Lankan forms. During World War II the

War Artists' Advisory Committee The War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), was a British government agency established within the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and headed by Sir Kenneth Clark. Its aim was to compile a comprehensive artis ...

acquired a work by Claessen under a scheme for artworks by colonial artists. Claessen's painting was displayed at the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

in London during 1945. In 1947 Claessen had a solo show at the Velasquez Gallery in Melbourne by which point he was painting in a purely abstract manner. Other solo shows, at the Archer Gallery in 1949 and in 1962 at the New Vision Centre in 1962, followed. Claessen exhibited at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

in 1956 and at the 1959 Sao Paulo Biennale in 1959 where he won an award. Claessen exhibited in London several times and was a member of the Hampstead Artists Council and the Islington Art Circle. He also exhibited with the

Royal Society of British Artists The Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) is a British art body established in 1823 as the Society of British Artists, as an alternative to the Royal Academy. History The RBA commenced with twenty-seven members, and took until 1876 to reach fi ...

and the Society of Graphic Art. Throughout his life Claessen continued to work at the Colombo Port Commission until his retirement and also published several volumes of poetry. A memorial exhibition was held in 2000.

Published works

* ''Poems of a Painter'' (1967) * ''Poems about Nothing'' (1981) * ''Collected Poems'' (1995)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Claessen, George 1909 births 1999 deaths 20th-century Sri Lankan painters Sri Lankan poets People from Colombo World War II artists