Alexander Mackenzie

Alexander Mackenzie (1923–2002) was a British painter associated with the post-war St Ives School, known for austere, carefully structured abstractions rooted in the landscape of west Cornwall. His paintings often reduce fields, rocks, walls and archaeological forms to spare arrangements of line, texture and muted colour.

Born in Liverpool, Mackenzie served with the Inns of Court Regiment during the Second World War before studying at Liverpool College of Art from 1946 to 1950. In 1951 he moved to Cornwall, where he became closely involved with the artistic community around St Ives and Newlyn. He formed important friendships with artists including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and John Wells.

Mackenzie joined the Penwith Society of Arts in 1952 and settled in Newlyn soon afterwards. The Penwith landscape became the principal source of his work: field boundaries, granite outcrops, ancient sites and the structure of the land itself were transformed into compositions that hovered between landscape and abstraction. He once described his works as “paintings first, with landscape elements”.

The Redfern Gallery began showing Mackenzie during the 1950s, at an important stage in the development of his career. His work subsequently appeared in major London and international exhibitions, and from 1959 to 1963 he held a succession of solo exhibitions at Waddington Galleries. In New York he had solo exhibitions at the Durlacher Gallery in 1960 and 1962.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s Mackenzie had developed the restrained abstract language for which he is best known. His surfaces were often scraped, rubbed back and reworked, while limited palettes of whites, greens, greys and earth colours reinforced the physical character of the Cornish landscape. Herbert Read and Roland Penrose both admired the order and discrimination of his compositions.

Alongside painting, Mackenzie was an influential teacher. He taught in Penzance before becoming Head of Fine Art at Plymouth College of Art in 1964, a position he held for twenty years. Although his exhibiting activity slowed during this period, he continued to paint with great consistency and returned more fully to exhibiting after his retirement.

His work was included in Tate’s major exhibition St Ives 1939–64: Twenty-five Years of Painting, Sculpture and Pottery in 1985, helping to re-establish his place within the history of post-war British abstraction. Interest in his work continued to grow during the 1990s and after his death.

The Redfern Gallery has continued to present Mackenzie’s work in exhibitions of Modern British and St Ives art. The gallery is also credited in connection with the Estate of Alexander Mackenzie, and his work featured in Redfern’s inaugural Pall Mall exhibition Then & Now in 2026.

Mackenzie’s work is held in major public collections including Tate and the Arts Council Collection.