William Crozier
b. 1930, Ireland
d. 2011
Irish painter and sculptor, 1930-2011
William Crozier was born in Glasgow to Irish parents and educated at Glasgow School of Art between 1949 and 1953. Crozier allied himself consciously with contemporary European art throughout the 1950s and 60s, rather than with the New York abstract circles. In 1964 the Arts Council included Crozier in the exhibition Six Young Painters alongside Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Peter Blake, Euan Uglow and Allen Jones. Based in London throughout the 1960s and 70s, Crozier exhibited his works all over Europe and taught at Bath Academy of Art alongside Howard Hodgkin and Gillian Ayres, with him finally leading the painting course at Winchester School of Art. Crozier’s work of the 1960s is considered some of his most important, having been influenced by a trip to concentration camps in Germany. Still very active and in demand, in 1975 Crozier was part of a two-person exhibition alongside Francis Bacon at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. Institutional collections include: Museum of Modern Art, Dallas; Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh). In 2017 the Irish Museum of Modern Art mounted a two-part retrospective of his work in Dublin and Cork.