Artist Spotlight I Drawings by Matt Rugg
Matt Rugg
Landscape, 2004
Gouache, pastel and charcoal on paper
106 x 76 cm
41 x 29 in.
In celebration of Matt Rugg's Birthday today, we are pleased to offer a selection of drawings from a series of works titled Land, LAND. These works date from the late 1990s to the mid 2010s.
A highly regarded abstract artist and teacher, Matt Rugg’s work is underpinned by a love for drawing. Taking inspiration from long walks in Wales, Northumberland, the North Yorkshire moors, the chalk South Downs in Sussex, the Jurassic Coast, France and Italy, Rugg often drew observed landscape from memory. In his drawings, abstract forms and marks coalesce with figuration.
Matt Rugg compared his processes for drawing and sculpture; so much more of it gets done on paper, because it’s faster, and there’s something intrinsic about the nature of making marks. Once ideas begin to take three-dimensional form, things slow down.
For a full list of available drawings by Matt Rugg, please call +44 (0)1980 862 244 or contact nac@sculpture.uk.com.
Matt Rugg
Landscape, 2000
Ink and graphite on paper
Initialled
39 x 52.8 cm
15 ³⁄₁₀ x 20 ⁷⁄₁₀ in.
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Matt Rugg (1935 – 2020) was born in Somerset, England. From 1956, he studied at King’s College, Newcastle, where he was taught by and subsequently worked with, Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton. He established a studio in London when his work was included in group shows including the Arts Council’s Young Contemporaries, the London Group, and at the ICA. From 1965 he taught at the Chelsea School of Art where he worked with Phyllida Barlow. Renowned for his wooden construction, drawing, painting, and steel sculpture from his Anatomies series, Matt Rugg’s work occupies a distinct space in abstract sculpture, in a language uniquely his own. Incessant experimentation and dedication to his process allowed for sculpture to feed into his drawing and vice versa.
Throughout the 1960s and onwards, Matt Rugg exhibited with the New Art Centre in London, where he showed constructions in carved and painted wood starting from his first solo exhibition at the gallery in 1963.
In 1978 he was a prize winner in the 2nd National Exhibition hosted by Tolly Cobbold / Eastern Arts.
Matt Rugg, Connecting Form, the first major retrospective of Rugg’s work exhibited at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle 2023-4, was well reviewed. Films about his work screened in exhibitions include ‘Not Wishing to Stand Still’ (2015) and ‘How to be an Artist’ (2023). His work is included in numerous major public collections including at the Tate Gallery; The British Council; the Arts Council; and the Contemporary Arts Society.
How to be an Artist (2023)
A film by Gary Malkin commissioned by Newcastle University and screened in the retrospective exhibition, Matt Rugg: Connecting Form, at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, 2023-24. We are delighted to bring you an exclusive preview.
Examining for the first time the life and work of the sculptor Matt Rugg (1935 - 2020), Michael Bird’s impeccably researched text vividly charts Rugg’s parallel careers as highly original artist and inspirational teacher. This book covers the full range of Rugg’s output, from his distinctive ‘painted drawings’ to large-scale metal constructions, and the unifying strands in his thought, skilfully drawing together his work, ideas and influential role as an educator.
Lavishly illustrated, it charts successive phases of Rugg’s continuous experimentation with found industrial materials and form, and the subtle interrelationship in his work between two and three dimensions.
Dr Harriet Sutcliffe’s doctoral research into the Basic Course led by Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton at King’s College, Newcastle, in the 1950s and 1960s provides fascinating insights into both Rugg’s oeuvre and formative developments in modern British art practice and pedagogy.
"At Chelsea School of Art the glorious opportunity to witness an artist offering with such authenticity and generosity all that they were investigating in their own work – this was first and foremost an artist at work, not a teacher.
Matt, you have given us enduring and vivid insights into what it is to be an artist, your unquenchable urge to do, to make, and to follow curiosity and fascination with such elegant imagination and your ever-present humour and warmth – it is all here in this remarkable exhibition. Thank you."
Words by Dame Phyllida Barlow DBE RA at the opening of Matt Rugg: Early and Late Works, an exhibition at the New Art Centre, Roche Court Sculpture Park.
12 November 2022