Edward Middleditch R.A. (1923 - 1987)

"..The tensions and anxieties that shaped the contemporary political climate of the 1950's, were perhaps most clearly felt in the work of Edward Middleditch, more so than others in the Kitchen Sink Group (Bratby, Coker, Greaves and Smith).

Being slightly older than the others in the group, Middleditch had fought in the War 'Badly wounded, he was awarded an MC at the age of twenty-two. According to Helen Lessore, he never talked of his wartime experiences, from which she deduced that the memory of them lay behind all that he did'..'There is specific allusion to death in his painting and drawings ... more generally, his interest in the remorseless suck and pull of water, in weirs or waves, invites association of this imagery with drowning and the cessation of consciousness.

Middleditch's dramatisation of the ordinary brings into play a mood that is more religious than political. The centrality of his compositions gives to his mundane imagery an iconic status, a sense of heightened import. Middleditch was also a brilliant draughtsman and his one-artist shows at the Beaux Arts Gallery always included a large preponderance of drawings. In these, as in his paintings his tough insistence on contingencies merely served to unveil his obsession with such universals as growth, struggle, movement and flux." Francis Spalding, The Kitchen Sink Painters.

1923 Born Chelmsford, Essex
1942-47 British Army
1949-52 Royal College of Art
1952 John Berger's 'Looking Forward Exhibition Whitechapel Gallery
1954 Solo Show, Beaux Arts Gallery
1956 XXVIII Venice Biennale
Moved with Greaves family to 'Ivy House' Buckinghamshire
1957 'Six Young Painters' Arts Council of Great Britain
1958 Pittsburgh International, Carnegie Institute
1958-63 Taught at Chelsea School of Art
1960 British Painting 1700-1960, Moscow
Young British Painters, Austria
1962 Awarded Gulbenkian Foundation Scholarship
1964 Head of Fine Art, Norwich School of Art
1966 Two man exhibition, with Arnold Van Praag at Roland, Browse and Delbanco
Painters in East Anglia Travelling Exhibition
1968 Elected Associate Royal Academician
1969 New Art Centre, One Man Exhibition
1973 Elected Royal Academician
1977 British Painting 1952-1977, Royal Academy
1979 Death of wife Jean
1984 Included in 'Forgotten Fifties', Sheffield City Art Gallery
Elected Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools
1986-87 Ill health forced him to resign as keeper
He died in 1987
1987-88 Included in 'Paradise Lost', Barbican Art Gallery.
Retrospective Arts Council and South Bank Centre, travelling exhibition
1991 Included in 'The Kitchen Sink Painters', The Mayor Gallery, London

Paintings