Robert Priseman

Born: 1965

Biography:

Robert Priseman is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in Essex, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world including the V&A, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Musée de Louvain la Neuve, The Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, The Allen Memorial Art Museum, The Mead Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art and The National Galleries of Scotland.
Priseman read Aesthetics and Art Theory at the University of Essex under art theorist Professor Michael Podro and began his working life as a book designer for Longman publishers (1989-1992). While there he started painting portraits in oils, with sitters including the Dalai Lama, Phil Collins, Jeremy Paxman and Cardinal Basil Hume. Work from this period is held in number of public collections including The Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and Cranfield University. In 2004 he gave up portrait painting and embarked on thematic series of works aimed to engage the viewer in dialogue on provocative psychological and socio-political issues. Such works include The Hospital Paintings, Subterraneans, The Francis Bacon Interiors, No Human Way to Kill, The Troubles and Nazi Gas Chambers.
In 2013 Priseman, in partnership with artist, Simon Carter established Contemporary British Painting. In 2013 he donated a collection of twenty paintings by contemporary British artists, known as 'The Robert Priseman Gift', to the Falmouth Art Gallery, England. Robert Priseman and Simon Carter established 'East Contemporary Art: A collection of 21st Century Practice' at University Campus Suffolk, England. Priseman also collects paintings by British artists he admires and owns the ‘Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting’ which first went on museum display at Huddersfield Art Gallery in 2014. In 2010 he was appointed Fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex in 2015 Visiting Professor in Fine Art at the Department of Art and Humanities, University Campus Suffolk, and in 2017 a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds
In 2013 Priseman founded Contemporary British Painting in partnership with artist Simon Carter - a platform for contemporary painting in the UK. Formed to explore and promote critical context and dialogue in current painting practice through solo and group exhibitions; talks, publications and an art prize, Contemporary British Painting also facilitates the donation of paintings to art collections, galleries and museums in the UK and around the world.
In 2012 Robert Priseman assembled a private collection of work by contemporary British painters which formed the foundation of The Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting. As well as emerging artists, the collection contains works by artists of national significance including: Tracey Emin, Matthew Krishanu, Mary Webb, Peter Blake, Susan Gunn, Graham Sutherland, Nicholas Middleton, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Simon Burton, Alex Hanna, Alan Davie, Pen Dalton, Susie Hamilton, Julie Umerle, Simon Carter, Judith Tucker, Marguerite Horner, Claudia Böse, Stephen Newton, Alison Pilkington, James Quin, Nathan Eastwood, Paula MacArthur, Greg Rook, Annabel Dover and David Hockney. The collection, owned by Priseman and his wife, was exhibited for the first time in 2014 at Huddersfield Art Gallery and now includes over 100 works of art.
'The Francis Bacon Interiors' were painted between 2006–2008 and depict the Paris hotel room where Francis Bacon's lover and muse George Dyer committed suicide, the room in a Catholic hospital in Madrid where Bacon himself died, and a series of studios where he painted. 'The Francis Bacon Interiors' formed part of 'The Subconscious Revealed', an exhibition curated by Priseman at Huddersfield Art Gallery in 2009. Other work in the exhibition included Bacon’s ‘Figure Study Two’ and works by Freud, Auerbach, Sutherland, Kossof and Richard Hamilton.
In 2007 Priseman began work on the No Human Way to Kill series of paintings which present the five different methods of execution used in the USA (Hanging, Firing Squad, Gassing, Lethal Injection and Electrocution), alongside the paintings, twelve etchings look at other methods of state sanctioned execution used around the world. The series examined how different countries have adopted different techniques to execute condemned prisoners, which in turn argue execution to be a socially constructed act of group catharsis. No Human Way to Kill was exhibited at The Dazed Gallery in London in 2008 and at The White Box in New York in 2010 and 2011. The original paintings and drawings are held at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA with a set of twelve etchings at the V&A, London.

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