The bewitching canvases of Winston Branch: ‘It is a dance. You can’t explain it’
After working in Berlin, California, New York and the Caribbean, the artist has now resettled in London, from where, he tells Christie’s, ‘I want to write my name on the ledger of British culture’
Winston Branch in his London studio, 2023. The Magic is in You, 1982-84 (detail, behind the artist), will be offered at Christie’s in London on 13 October 2023
When Winston Branch was professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1990s, the painter would counsel his students against repetition. ‘It is so easy to go on autopilot. I am constantly trying to see the canvas with fresh eyes.’
This is not something Branch needs to worry about. His abstract paintings have a bewitching intensity drawn from the subconscious. He begins with an emotion and paints as many canvases as it takes until that feeling is fulfilled. When is that? ‘Well, that’s the magic. It is a dance. You can’t explain it,’ he says.
Winston Branch (b. 1947), The Magic is in You, 1982-84. Acrylic on canvas. 78⅛ x 56 in (198.5 x 142.1 cm). Sold for £239,400 on 13 October 2023 at Christie’s in London
Born in St Lucia in 1947, Branch was sent to school in London in 1958, before enrolling at the Slade School of Art in 1966. In those days he knew everyone, from fellow rising stars David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland and Patrick Procktor to the author Robert Fraser (Branch contributed illustrations to West Africa magazine, of which Fraser was literary editor).
Back then the art world was small, bohemian and supportive, he says. When Branch held his first exhibition at the Arts Lab in 1967, Procktor brought the fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, who floated around in a black fedora dropping compliments. ‘I told him if he liked my paintings so much, he should buy one for 100 guineas!’ says the artist, laughing at his own youthful arrogance.
Winston Branch (b. 1947), West Indian, 1973. Oil on canvas. 105 x 90.2 cm. Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, Rugby Borough Council. © Winston Branch
At the Slade, Branch was taught by Euan Uglow, William Coldstream and John Aldridge. Coldstream taught him how to paint while Uglow taught him how to see, and the Great Bardfield painter Aldridge instilled in him a love of horticulture.
He studied alongside Derek Jarman and Maggi Hambling, making Pop-inflected work in bright primary colours. His paintings were vibrant and exciting, with an early Hockneysque insouciance, and in 1970 he won the Prix de Rome. He began to feel constrained, however, by the expectation that his art should tell a story. ‘London is a very literary place,’ he says. ‘People like their paintings to symbolise something.’
Publicity for the private view of Branch’s 1967 exhibition at the Arts Lab in London, where Cecil Beaton was among the attendees
The move to abstraction was gradual. It began with an appreciation of J.M.W. Turner’s late watercolours: ‘He totally obliterated any reality. It was just cadmium yellow and flecks of red.’ But he did not become fully committed until 1978, while on a Guggenheim fellowship in New York. ‘I saw the paintings of Clyfford Still and it made me realise I did not want to use colour as illustration but as its own autonomy,’ he says.
Recognising that London, now enthralled by conceptual art and new media, was not the place for abstract painting, the artist spent the next few decades moving between Berlin, New York, St Lucia and California, developing a fluid, confident style.
Winston Branch (b. 1947), Zachary II, 1982. Polyvinyl acetate and acrylic paint on canvas. 2043 x 1731 mm. Photo: © Tate
He took Monet’s waterlilies and melted them into glorious, shimmering colour that evoked unfathomable depths. He conveyed the rhythms of nature in thickly layered patches of powdery acrylic.
Prestigious awards followed, as well as residencies at Fisk University in Tennessee and in Berlin. He represented Great Britain at FESTAC 77 in Lagos and had exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California and the Berkeley Art Museum, as well as in Argentina and Brazil. In the 1990s, the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott invited Branch to make work for the National Collection of St Lucia, and the island became his base for the next 14 years.
Winston Branch in his Berlin studio: in 1976 he was invited to participate in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme
Now back in the UK, Branch says his wandering days are over, with an infectious grin that suggests he might pack his bags tomorrow. However, at 76, he admits it is time to slow down. ‘I love London,’ he says, ‘there is a subtlety that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It is very ambiguous, and I think it is reflected in my pictorial explorations.’ That nuance was conveyed earlier this year in his exhibition Fragments of Light at Cedric Bardawil.
Winston Branch at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, February 2023. Photo: Cedric Bardawil
In 2018, the Tate Collection acquired Zachary II (1982), a stunning abstract work of powder blues and sandy pinks. The canvas is part of a series of eight paintings Branch made when he was living on Tottenham Court Road in central London in the early 1980s, another of which, The Magic is in You, will be offered at Christie’s in the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on 13 October 2023.
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In these works, Branch conveys his restlessness in great bursts of abstract paintwork, intimating secrets both personal and universal about the world around us through colour, sensation and energy.
His return to the UK was impelled by a desire to cement his legacy. ‘I want to write my name on the ledger of British culture,’ he says. When the artist met former Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota at a party, ‘I told him it was my time, and he agreed.’
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