Anne Dunn

Anne Dunn (b. 1929) is known for paintings, drawings and collages in which still life, landscape, interiors and figures are treated with a strong sense of colour and atmosphere. Her work has moved between figuration and abstraction throughout her career, while retaining a distinctive interest in the arrangement of forms within the picture.

Born in London and raised partly in Canada, Dunn studied at Chelsea School of Art before continuing her studies in Paris at the Anglo-French Centre and the Académie Julian. Her early development was encouraged by Graham Sutherland and Jean Hélion. In the late 1940s she had a relationship with Lucian Freud, with whom she twice visited Cashel Bay, County Galway, where she produced a group of drawings and paintings.

Freud introduced Dunn to the painter and writer Michael Wishart, whom she married in 1950. They subsequently lived in France, first in Paris and then in Provence, and had a son, Francis. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1960. Dunn’s first solo exhibition had been held at the Leicester Galleries in 1957, where she continued to exhibit regularly throughout the 1960s. Her work during these years encompassed still life, landscape and portraiture, drawing on both figurative and abstract approaches.

In 1960 Dunn married the painter Rodrigo Moynihan, with whom she had a son, Danny. Four years later, Dunn, Moynihan and the writer Francis Wyndham co-founded and edited the influential quarterly Art and Literature, which ran from 1964 to 1967. The journal brought together writers and artists from Britain, Europe and the United States and reflected the increasingly international artistic circles in which Dunn was working.

From the late 1960s her career became increasingly transatlantic. She exhibited at Fischbach Gallery, New York, from 1967 and began experimenting with collage around the same period. She took an apartment in New York in 1973 and thereafter divided much of her time between Europe and North America, while continuing to paint and draw.

Dunn first exhibited at The Redfern Gallery in 1972, in New Paintings, Collages, Drawings by Anne Dunn. She returned for Anne Dunn: Early Paintings and Drawings in 2009, curated by Martin Harrison, author of the Francis Bacon catalogue raisonné. Her work is held in public collections including the Arts Council Collection, the Government Art Collection, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Carlisle Museum and Art Gallery.

Anne Dunn is represented by The Redfern Gallery.