New LS Lowry exhibition aims to demolish ‘naive and uncultured’ myth | LS Lowry
A new exhibition of works by LS Lowry will “debunk several myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the exhibition’s co-curator says is still unfairly derided as “naïve and uncultured”.
LS Lowry: Theater of Life features 140 paintings by the artist reflecting the life of the industrial working class in the north-west of England in the early and mid-20th century.
A 1948 review in the Guardian described him as “direct, unpretentious and utterly honest”, but according to one of the curators behind the exhibition, which opens on 24 October, the stark nature of his paintings has led to misinterpretations of his work.
“What we hope to do is actually debunk a few myths,” says Anthony Spira, director of MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. “He was not just an industrial painter. He was certainly not naïve, isolated or self-taught; he spent many years at art school.
“He went to the opera, the theatre, the cinema. He also collected works of art, including the works of the pre-Raphaelite period, Jacob Epstein and Lucien Freud. He was much more cultured and interested than one might think.”
The exhibition also includes A Football Match, a rare 1932 painting depicting a match between two unknown teams. This is the first time the painting has been seen publicly in nearly 85 years; It was exhibited at the Royal Academy ten years after it was last painted.
Lowry, a Manchester City supporter, had painted his favorite team’s match against Sheffield United in 1938, but it was unusual for him to depict a real-life event rather than a piece consisting of several combined scenes.
“It was probably something he witnessed,” Spira says. “Probably an amateur game… most of its scenes are more about crowds than actual sports.”
Earlier this year, LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes gave audiences an insight into the artist’s inner workings through reinvented interviews lip-synched by Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Lowry.
The BBC film was based on interviews conducted in 1972 when a young woman named Angela Barratt approached the artist and asked if she could interview him. When he died in 2022, the tapes were discovered by his son. The speeches were described by the Guardian as “sensitive, revealing and deeply moving”.
McKellen criticized Tate in 2011 for not paying enough attention to Lowry. Two years later to Lowry A show at Tate Britain It includes 90 works, mostly focusing on industrial scenes of workers and factories.
Spira said that works such as Coming Out of School and The Pond are part of Lowry’s signature style and, if presented in isolation, could become a “negative caricature” of his output.
“It actually did a lot more than that,” Spira says of industrial work environments. “He devoted a lot of free time, not just to people going to football matches, but also to the seaside, to festivals, to people having fun, having fun (classic British social life).”
His most famous painting, Going to the Match, was saved from being lost in a private collection in 2022 when it was purchased by the Lowry art center in Salford for £7.8 million.
The exhibition at MK Gallery was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his death. Lowry died just a few months before a major retrospective exhibition opened at the Royal Academy.
