Oliver kilbourn biography
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Pitman Painter – Oliver Kilbourn
Oliver Percival Kilbourn was a member of the inspirational group the Pitman Painters. Born on this date in 1904, Kilbourn was a British coal miner, painter, and founding member of the Ashington Group, otherwise known as the Pitman Painters.
Widely considered to be the group’s best-known artist, Kilbourn used his experience of working as a miner to depict images of the world around him.
The Ashington Group was a small society of artists based in Ashington, Northumberland (my home county!). The men met regularly between 1934 and 1984 and despite the difficult conditions in which they lived – working class lives, hard, dangerous and manual work with long hours they became celebrated in the British art world of the 1930s and 1940s.
Wanting to educate themselves they started out as the Ashington branch of the Workers Educational Association, taking evening classes in various subjects but found a real love when they turned their
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Just blogging away…doing the hard blog
Posted by Bonza Rottwheeler on May 27, 2021
Tags: Ashington Group, Closure of UK coal mines, George Blessed, Independent Labour Party, Japanese coal mining (Fukuoka), Jimmy Floyd, Lee Hall, Leslie Brownrigg, Naive art, Norman Cornish, Northumberland coal miners, Oliver Kilbourn, Pitmen Painters, Robert Lyon, Sakubei Yamamoto, Shansi (China) mining, Social Realism (art), Tagawa History and Coal Museum, Thatcherite Britain, WEA, William Feaver, Woodhorn and Ellington collieries, Woodhorn Mining Museum
One of the more novel art genres to emerge in the first third of last century was the “Pitman Painters” phenomenon in northern England. Known as the Ashington Group✱, these were a small collective of unionised mine workers in county Northumberland who approached their local Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) seeking out tuition in new areas of education. Initially the pitmen were hoping WEA could find a economics p
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Oliver Kilbourn
Oliver Kilbourn | |
|---|---|
| Born | Oliver Percival Kilbourn 1904 Ashington, Northumberland |
| Died | 1993 |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Workers' Educational Association Workers' Educational Association Ashington Miners' Union |
| Known for | Coal mining Painting |
| Notable work | My Life as a Pitman |
| Movement | Modern art Figurative painting |
Oliver Percival Kilbourn (6 October 1904 – April 1993) was a British coal miner, painter, and founding member of the Ashington Group.
Widely considered to be the group's best-known artist, Kilbourn used the experiences that he had gained while working in the mines and represented them in his art work. His main contribution to the Ashington Group was his focus on Modern art.[1]
Early life and family
[edit]Kilbourn was born in 75 Chestnut Street, Ashington, and was the fifth child of James Smith Kilbourn and Mary Hannah Chilton. After attending elementary school, he began working as a miner at