On Thursday 26th June, Edinburgh Printmakers is partnering with City Art Centre for two events about the life and work of artist John Bellany.
- Join us at 3pm at City Arty Centre for a tour of the exhibtion John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture led by artist Sandy Moffat OBE RSA, who curated the exhibition with Bill Hare.
- Later, at 6pm at Edinburgh Printmakers we will be hosting the talk Through A Glass Darkly: The Prints of John Bellany, delivered by Master Printer Alfons Bytautas RSA.
Tickets are available for each event individually or as a joint ticket.
The renowned artist John Bellany CBE RA (1942 - 2013), a descendant of generations of fisher folk, based much of his evocative and emotionally charged work on the experience of growing up in a small Scottish East Coast fishing community. John Bellany was one of the most significant Scottish painters of the modern era. However, he also made prints in sporadic and inspired bursts during his entire career, in collaboration with many different master printers and in print workshops throughout the UK.
City Art Centre's exhibition A Life in Self-Portraiture brings together over 80 autobiographical drawings, paintings, prints and sketchbooks, spanning from the early 1960s until the artist’s death in 2013. John Bellany was one of the most prolific self-portraitists in history, obsessively documenting his own image throughout his lifetime. This exhibition captures the wide range of works created across different mediums, from carefully observed student studies, to his epic pictorial narratives where he disguised himself in different roles and fantastical characters
Bellany's association with Edinburgh Printmakers was one of the longest, lasting for over five decades. During this time, the printmaker Alfons Bytautas worked with Bellany on many of his projects from their first major collaboration in 1982 until the publication of the suite “The Sacred Sea” (with poet George Bruce) in 2007. Bellany saw himself as working in the tradition of great painter-printmakers such as Durer, Rembrandt and Goya. Alfons Bytautas' talk will focus on Bellany’s success as a printmaker in linking the strength of his own personal vision with his exquisite skills as a draughtsman.
Sandy Moffat OBE RSA is an artist and teacher. Born in Dunfermline in 1943, he studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art. From 1968 to 1978 he was the Director of the New 57 Gallery in Edinburgh. In 1979 he joined the staff of The Glasgow School of Art where he was Head of Painting from 1992 until his retirement in 2005. His portraits of the major poets of the Scottish Renaissance movement now hang in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and his paintings are represented in many private and public collections. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 2004 and awarded an OBE for his services to the arts in 2006.
Alfons Bytautas RSA is a renowned Scottish artist based in Newcastle whose abstract paintings, drawings and prints centre on chance interplays and the abstraction of natural forms. Born in the Scottish Borders, Bytautas studied at Edinburgh College of Art (1972-76) before going to Paris to study at Atelier 17, the studio of the esteemed Modernist printmaker Stanley William Hayter. Bytautas was Master Printmaker at Edinburgh Printmakers from 1979 to 2009 and is world-recognised as an innovator in printmaking techniques.
Between October 2024 – June 2025, Edinburgh Printmakers is hosting six events that focus on rarely seen treasures from our Permanent Collection in our "Unwrapped" series. This series is part of our heritage project Castle Mills: Then & Now supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, made possible by money raised by National Lottery players.
