ALLEN, Trevor

1939 - 2008

As Trevor Abbott, he was born at Portsmouth on 15 February 1939, son of a seaman, when his mother remarried, he adopted his stepfather's surname of Allen and a few years before his death changing his name to Trevor Allen Abbott. The family came to London where Trevor was sent to the junior school of art in Camberwell and, after national service in the Royal Anglian Regiment, he studied at the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts 1960-1964. During this time, he worked with printmaker, painter and art teacher Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993) at his studio in Great Bardfield, Essex, where there was a significant artistic community and later, he worked with the Academician Philip Sutton (1928-2021) on his Tahitian blocks. Trevor married in 1962 Christine Pleace and they had one daughter. In 1964 he set up a print studio in Balham and was teaching at various colleges of art, including Brighton, Ravensbourne in Kent, Bradford and at Ipswich, but from 1971 taught full-time at Goldsmiths College in south London before retiring in 1996 and on his retirement he and his wife moved from Suffolk to Somerset. In 1965 Allen was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and was a founder member of the Suffolk Group of Artists. Allen exhibited at the London Graphic Arts Associates in Bond Street in London and the Serpentine Gallery in London; the Thumb Gallery; Fakenham Arts Festival and Belstead House, Ipswich also at the Print Biennales at Fredrikstad in Norway and Krakow in Poland; the International Print Exhibition in Milan; the Brighton Festival; the ICA Gallery and at Three Decades of Artists from the London Art Schools. Allen's work can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, Sheffield City Art Gallery, Northampton Art Gallery, as well as in several education authorities. Trevor Allen Abbott died at Yeovil, Somerset on 24 February 2008.

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Works by This Artist