Sargy Mann - 1937 - 2015

Established by the artist’s estate the Sargy Mann Archive aims to further an understanding of his work and to collaborate on projects bringing his paintings, drawings and writing on art and visual perception to a wider public audience. 

Throughout his life Sargy Mann (1937- 2015) had a fascination with the nature of visual perception and a desire  to make paintings that could communicate his  experience of the world.

This website has been set up with the intention of creating an archive of Sargy Mann’s paintings and drawings and also of his writing and research on painting (notably the work of Pierre Bonnard) and visual perception.

In an essay, Shared Experience (1996) he wrote this description of the kind of painting he was interested in, “It can give the viewer what he would not see were he in the place of the artist. It can give him something essentially and qualitatively different from that, something he could never experience except through the medium of that particular painting. It can give him what the artist saw or imagined. This, I believe was what John Betjeman was getting at when he once said to me, “art is shared experience.” “

The essay ‘Shared Experience’ can be read in full here.

Contact…

We are happy to facilitate research into Sargy Mann’s work or the use of his own research into projects where it could be valuable.

For any enquiries contact  info@sargymannarchive.com

1937         Born in Hythe, Kent

1943-53   Dartington School

1953 -58  Oxford Technical College

1960-64   Camberwell School of Art and Crafts

1967          Postgraduate, Camberwell School of Art and Crafts

1969-88   Teaching, Camberwell School of Art and Crafts

1969-88   Teaching, Camden Arts Centre

1973          Cataract Operations

1973          First solo exhibition, Salisbury Festival of Art’s

1976          Marries Frances Carey

1978          First retinal detachment, resulting in blindness in one eye

1980          Moves with family to 58 Lyndhurst Grove SE15

1980          Second retinal detachment, leaving only partial vision in one eye

1987          First solo exhibition at Cadogan Contemporary

1990          Moves from Peckham to Bungay, Suffolk

1994          Curates Bonnard at Le Bosquet exhibition at Hayward Gallery

1999-08    Visiting Lecturer at the Prince’s Drawing School

2002          Corneal graft, bringing temporary, but significant improvement to vision

2005          Total loss of vision on return from trip to Cadaques, Spain

2006         Exhibition of Cadaques paintings (first to be made after total loss of sight)

2015         Died in Bungay, Suffolk

2015         Final exhibition of new work at Cadogan Contemporary