Prunella Clough

About

Born in Chelsea, Prunella Clough was educated by her father, the poet Eric Taylor. She enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art in 1937, where her tutors included sculptor Henry Moore. During the second world war she drew charts, maps and graphs for the Office of War Information and by 1945 formed friendships with a group of artists including Michael Ayrton, Keith Vaughan, John Craxton and poet Dylan Thomas that met in the Camden Hill Studio. Clough’s work enjoyed increasing recognition from the 1970s onwards, with exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, Warwick Arts Trust, the Camden Arts Centre and Kettle’s Yard. From the early 1960s she also made assemblages of found objects gathered from trips to industrial sites, which were discovered in her studio after her death.

Clough was a highly influential artist and teacher to the post-war generation yet did not become as famous as her peers. A contributing factor was her love of privacy. Later in her career Clough made abstract works referencing urban rubbish found on the streets of London, such as plastic bags, discarded gloves, and oil stains. These were first exhibited in her successful 1989 show Prunella Clough: Recent Paintings, 1980-1989 at Annely Juda Fine Art in London. In 1999, three months before her death at the age of 80, she won the £30,000 Jerwood Prize for Painting. In 2007 Tate Britain staged a retrospective exhibition of her work. She was very generous with her money and her art.

Legacy

Income from the estate of Prunella Clough is shared between seven charities including the RLF to help support future generations of writers and artists.