Geoffrey Rigden

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Geoffrey Rigden

Geoff Rigden was born in 1943 in Cheltenham, and studied at the Royal college of Art in London, where he now lives and works. He was a prizewinner at the John Moores Liverpool exhibition in 1965, selected by Patrick Heron, Clement Greenberg, and John Russell, and a Tolly Cobbold/Eastern Arts prizewinner in 1977. His work was shown at Stockwell Depot in the late Seventies, and was in the 1980 Hayward Annual selected by John Hoyland. A solo show at Spacex Gallery, Exeter in 1982 and the Air Gallery, London 1983, were followed by solo shows at the Francis Graham-Dixon Gallery in 1988, 1990, 1993, and 1995, and the Cross Street Gallery in 2000.

In 1990 Rigden's work was exhibited in “Colour in Modern Painting” at Stoke on Trent City Art Gallery, and was also included in “British Abstract Painting” at Flowers East in 2001, and Matthew Collings' "Art Crazy Nation" 2002. He was chosen by John McLean as “Artist for the Day” at Flowers Central in 2005. His work is in various public and private collections, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. In 1996 he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award.

Geoff Rigden has taught widely and with considerable influence. His deft and idiosyncratic approach to painting has been broadly admired and often imitated, and he has consistently brought a refined painterly intelligence to his work as his style has clarified.