‘You don’t need brains to be an artist …’ The work of LS Lowry.

An illustrated talk about the life and work of LS Lowry by Michael Simpson, Director of Visual Art, The Lowry.

LS Lowry (1887-1976) was a maverick artist who refused to conform to the British art establishment’s expectations about what to paint and what to say. While his more lauded British contemporaries explored the development of modernism and abstraction, Lowry was instead determined to make his prime subject the daily lives being led by everyday people around him - often against the backdrop of an oppressively industrial northern environment. But just as his paintings and drawings of crowded city streets were finally being exhibited to great success in London, Lowry chose instead to paint startlingly empty landscapes and seascapes, that expressed his own personal feelings of loneliness and social isolation. He called it ‘the battle of life’ and once again he was addressing a subject matter that most other artists chose to ignore.

The talk will take place from 5.30pm in the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery. Attendees arriving before 5.30pm will be able to see LS Lowry’s Market Stalls (1961) in The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery. The work is on loan from Marks and Spencer Group plc.