Image Not Available

Gordon House

1932 - 2004

BiographyAdventurous artist who imposed a new spirit on ruined landscapes

Bernard Cohen
Saturday April 10, 2004
The Guardian

Many of the works made during his last years by the painter and graphic designer Gordon House, who has died aged 71, referred back to his birthplace in the Swansea valley. He spent his earliest years in the steel town of Pontardawe. In Tin-pan Valley, the memoir he published earlier this year, he recalled "the clamour of steel mills ... the tinplate works and pithead gear" and "dynamite blasting as coal seams were struck higher up the valley".

No doubt that world of practicalities influenced his graphic design. Once, having produced an entirely original design for the contents of a catalogue for a large Arts Council exhibition, he was told that there was no money available for anything but a few words on the front cover. He reacted calmly by saying that he would, therefore, do a beautiful white cover - and he did. He once described his design work for the Arts Council of Great Britain "as a public service".

Unemployment and the depression of the 1930s led Gordon's parents to take him from the valleys of south Wales to the order and designed coherence of Letchworth, "Hertfordshire's first garden city". After leaving school at 14, he went to study, first, at Luton School of Art. For a while after that, he worked in a hospital, before, with the aid of a scholarship, moving on to St Albans School of Art.

He then worked as an assistant to the ecclesiastical sculptor Theodore Kern. Work on the restoration of sculpture in bombed churches, at a time of limited resources, provided lessons in handling practicalities.

Gordon then joined a small advertising studio in Letchworth - "everything in Gill Sans" - and his career as a graphic designer was underway. Between 1952 and 1959, he designed for ICI and, from 1959 and 1961, for the Kynoch Press. He married Jo Hull in 1955.

By 1961, Gordon had become established among a new generation of artists as an independently minded and adventurous painter and designer. The previous year, he had shown his large, bold, hard-edged canvasses at the important London "Situation" exhibition of large-scale abstract painting, and had designed the catalogue for that exhibition.

My generation of artists saw him as a spirited painter colleague, and also as one who had a vision of what the environment of art (catalogues, private view cards, exhibition posters, even galleries) could look like.

At the start of the 1960s, galleries and museums lacked any kind of coherent approach to matters of communication and presentation. They were without house styles, and seemed to change graphics with every exhibition. The art world was filled with stylistic debris, just as London was still covered with the debris of the second world war. Gordon's graphics helped clear away the debris of the galleries, and contributed to a new spirit that in turn helped rebuild London.

A new generation of dealers quickly recognised the freshness of his designing. A simple, modular graphic layout and house style turned every gallery into an identifiable entity; an easy-to-read typeface made his graphics light in feel and popular with dealers, artists and public alike. He had the ability to inspire those for whom he worked. He became a part of the whole production of an exhibition. Galleries seemed to change and freshen up in response to his designs, and artists felt that their studio adventures were being extended by collaboration with him.

As the 1960s moved on, Gordon designed for the pop world. He worked for the Beatles, designing their White album and the back of the Sergeant Pepper album, for which his longtime friend Peter Blake designed the front. Later, he designed Wings' first album. He delighted in the creative energy of others, and so could respond to the talents of musicians and artists alike.

Gordon made paintings throughout his life as a designer. During the 1960s and 70s, his canvasses and prints reflected the dramatic tensions of his graphic design; by the 1980s, Wales had become his constant subject matter. The surface, texture and colour of his paintings softened. No doubt, he needed to pay homage to the places and the people who had shaped him, just as he always paid homage to the artists for whom he designed.

His canvasses reduced in size, becoming palm-of-the-hand landscapes. He spent much time in Wales and, in his final years, he used his brush to walk a path through memories of collieries, valleys, smoking stacks, rows of cottages and the people who had first nurtured him.

I do not remember Gordon ever discussing theories of either art or design. In graphic design, he saw "a cause", a way of building something better. In that respect, his graphics paid homage to his garden city. I can only imagine that his later paintings were made in homage to the human and environmental struggles of the country of his birth.

He is survived by his wife, and three of their four children, Joanne, Ceri and Joel.

· Gordon House, painter and graphic designer, born June 22 1932; died March 20 2004

Person TypeIndividual

Terms