Simon Quadrat

Simon Quadrat PPRWA

Winter Show 1 December 2012 – 24 February 2013

oil on canvas, 26 x 36cm (10 x 14 inches) £1,800

Simon Quadrat’s poetic paintings look deep into the human psyche revealing a world that is edgy and threatened yet filled with wonders. Closest to the Neo Romantics in the pre and post-war period, Simon Quadrat’s painterly and stylised works never fail to appeal.

In 2010 Sladers Yard hosted a major exhibition of fifty recent paintings by the talented and appealing Simon Quadrat whose work, ten years into his professional life as an artist, seems to get better and better. Simon Quadrat has been painting professionally since 2000. Since then he has had a number of successful solo exhibitions in London including at Panter & Hall in 2009 and 2011 and in Cambridge, Bath, Bristol and the Cotswolds. His work has been exhibited regularly at the major London Art Fairs and at the RWA where he was President for a time. Simon Quadrat recently exhibited at Sladers Yard as part of our “Romantic Landscape” exhibition, 21 April to 10 June 2012.

Born in London in 1946, he was the son of Jewish émigrés who separately fled Germany in the 1930s. He grew up in fifties London in a cosmopolitan family where he says many languages were spoken often all at once. At school he painted factories and desolate urban scenes and read books on art, but had no thought of becoming an artist. Instead he read law and went on to a career as a criminal barrister in the Temple in London, and from 1985 in Bristol.

His paintings are permeated with memories, images and events from the 1950s. Simon’s childhood in London, with trips to the seaside and the circus, preoccupy his pictures. Acknowledged influences include Western art from early Sienese to the present day, particularly some of the British and European painters from the immediate pre and post war period. He is fascinated by the documentary films and images of the GPO Film Unit and Recording Britain all of which feed his imagination and emerge in his paintings.

Narrow Street in Spring oil on canvas 31 x 41cm £1,800

The faces that look out from Simon Quadrat’s paintings communicate directly with the onlooker. Their eyes seem to tell stories and even evoke memories. The paintings speak of common experience with an empathetic, gentle voice. They are informed by a highly intelligent and educated European mind. References to paintings and to stories are there to be picked up or not as the case may be. Simon Quadrat’s subtle yet daring use of colour and his way of laying on paint and scraping it away to create layers of texture and what could be called history within the painting create a quality of work that is a delight to see. Combined with his evocative subject matter this creates fascinating and desirable painting

Paintings by Simon Quadrat currently available at Sladers Yard (t: 01308 459511)