Artist Database

Born in Bolton, Lancashire, Brian Bradshaw trained at the Bolton and Manchester Schools of Art before proceeding to the Royal College of Art. In 1960 he was invited to South Africa to take the position of Chair of Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Makanda.

It was the Eastern Cape landscape that fundamentally transformed Bradshaw's artistic language, drawing him away from the realism of his English years toward a charged interplay between abstraction and the raw physicality of his adopted terrain. In 1964 Bradshaw founded the Grahamstown Group, exhibiting throughout South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Bradshaw's use of thick impasto and aggressive forms carried the dignified atmosphere of a sun-drenched landscape, opulent with vibrating colour. Bradshaw's continued influence can be seen in the work of his former students Penny Siopis (1953-), Christopher Till (1951-), and Neil Rodger (1941-2013).