Cyril Mann - Art and Career

Art and Career

In an art career that spanned nearly half a century, the effects of light and shadow remained a lifelong fascination. In his earliest work done in Paris and London, the artist paints facing the sun. These small-scale works of urban scenes tend to be monochromatic and done from preliminary sketches.

For three years, from the early to mid-1950s, Mann painted in artificial light, focusing on the three-dimensional shape of shadows cast by household objects. This development, known as the "solid-shadow period", was important to Mann's artistic development, as he used strong, intense colouring with a formalised line for the first time.

In his final phase, from the 1960s onwards – when, coincidentally, he married his second wife, the Dutch-Indonesian Renske van Slooten, who was 29 years his junior – Mann painted the dynamic effects of light and shadow. He uses as his inspiration nudes of his young wife, as well as sunlit interiors, flowers, self portraits and anything else at hand, such as an oil can, a stapler, and toys from his second daughter, Amanda, born in 1968. There is a sense of release as these now often large oils are painted directly and at great speed.