Artists

Merlyn Evans was a British painter, printmaker, and sculptor who worked in Cubism, Abstraction, and Surrealism. He was born in Cardiff, Wales and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. Evans studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1927 to 1931 and then at the Royal College of Art in London from 1932 to 1934. He travelled extensively in Europe, including to France, Germany, Denmark, and Italy, and met extraordinary artists like Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Alberto Giacometti, and Max Ernst. In 1936, he exhibited at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. Evans lived in Durban between 1938 and 1942, where he taught at the Natal Technical College. During World War II, he served first in the South African Army and then the British Army; experiences that would strongly influence his later art. Returning to London after the war, he held his first substantial solo show at the Leicester Galleries in 1949 and the Whitechapel Gallery held a retrospective of his work in 1956. Evans taught painting at the Royal College of Art from 1965 until his death.