Born: 1925 Nassau, Colony of the Bahama Islands (now Bahamas)
Died: 2006 Edinburgh, Scotland
Year of Migration to the UK: 1931
Biography
Artist, poet, writer and gardener, Ian Hamilton Finlay was born to parents of Scottish descent in Nassau, Colony of the Bahama Islands (now Bahamas) on 28 October 1925. In 1931, Finlay was sent to Scotland to boarding school, initially attending Larchfield School near Helensburgh, before moving to Dollar Academy. His father, James, smuggled alcohol from Nassau into the USA until prohibition ended in 1933. Afterwards, he and Finlay’s mother, Annie Pettigrew, tried to establish an orange farm in Florida, but the venture failed, and they eventually returned to Scotland in reduced financial conditions. Aged 13, following the outbreak of the Second World War, the young Hamilton Finlay was evacuated to live with family in the countryside, initially in Gartmore and later in Kirkcudbright. Between 1943 and 1945 he enrolled at Glasgow School of Art but did not attend classes very regularly. By 1948, Finlay was living in Drum-Na Keil in rural Perthshire. Over the next eight years, he struggled as a writer and painter, occasionally publishing fishing-themed short stories in the Glasgow Herald and the Scottish Angler, while supplementing his income through shepherding and labouring. He spent the winter of 1955-56 on Rousay, one of the Orkney Islands. From 1956 onwards Finlay was largely based in Edinburgh.
Finlay’s work explores the relationship between the visual and the textual, often with a humorous effect. His style is characterised by stark simplicity, recurring patterns, purposeful artistic imitation, and a playful engagement with established literary traditions. In pieces that transform text into a visual experience, he explores themes such as the sea, boats and ships, travel, navigation, migration, coastal regions, the natural environment, fish, and the connection between land and sea. He often produced ‘poem-objects’, inscribing poems onto materials such as marble, granite, slate, or even gardening tools and trees. These pieces were embedded in the surrounding natural environment through a process Finlay called ‘planting’ poems. In late 1962, through his connection with Edwin Morgan, Finlay established links with the concrete poets of São Paulo’s Noigandres collective and became involved in the Brazilian movement. In concrete poetry, as in Finlay’s work, the visual arrangement of linguistic elements is as important as the words themselves. The movement blurs the distinction between paper and canvas, pushing the boundaries of language by incorporating visual, auditory, and even kinetic elements, to create a multi-sensory experience. In addition to these themes and forms of expression, Finlay was fascinated by the French Revolution and the Second World War, often returning to the Latin memento mori phrase, 'Et in Arcadia ego' in his work.
As a prolific poet and writer, he also published in a more conventional book format. In 1958, he released his debut book, The Sea-bed and Other Stories, and several of his plays were aired by the BBC. His poetry collection, The Dancers Inherit the Party: Selected Poems (1960), was published by Migrant Press, which was founded by the Scottish internationalist poet and medical doctor, Gael Turnbull. (Turnbull, who lived in Scotland, England, the USA, and Canada, named his press to reflect his peripatetic lifestyle and his promotion of transatlantic connections.) The illustrations for this publication were provided by Yugoslav-born émigré artist Željko Kujundžić. A significant portion of Finlay’s concrete poetry was published through his own Wild Hawthorn Press and appeared in his magazine, Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. This visual poetry publication ran for 25 issues between 1962 and 1967. While it primarily featured concrete poems, it also included both traditional and avant-garde works.
Finlay’s incorporation of Nazi symbols in his drawing Two Scythes (1990) led to unfounded accusations of neo-Nazi sympathies and antisemitism. He took legal action against a Parisian magazine that had made these claims, and the court ruled in his favour, awarding him symbolic damages of one franc. Later interpretations viewed the piece as a critique of totalitarianism. Despite clearing his name, the stress of the accusations and the lawsuit caused significant disruption in his life, ultimately leading to a divorce from his wife. Throughout his life, Finlay also suffered from severe agoraphobia. Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec and Ailie. Ian Hamilton Finlay died in Edinburgh, Scotland on 27 March 2006. His works are held in numerous UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, National Galleries of Scotland, Tate, Scottish Parliament, Government Art Collection, and Southampton City Art Gallery, among others. However, his greatest legacy is the garden he created at Little Sparta, outside Edinburgh, where sculpture and text-based artworks, often made in collaboration, present themselves within the landscaping and planting; hence, the garden itself, in its totality, is the artwork.
Related books
- Jo Lindsay Walton and Ed Luker, eds., Poetry and work: work in modern and contemporary Anglophone poetry (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
- Jessie Sheeler and Robin Gillanders, Little Sparta: a guide to the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2015)
- John Dixon Hunt, Nature over again: the garden art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (London: Reaktion, 2008)
- Rosemarie E. Pahlke et al., Ian Hamilton Finlay : prints 1963-1997 = Druckgrafik (Ostfildern: Cantz, 1997)
- Alec Finlay, Ian Hamilton Finlay (Edinburgh: Chapman, 1994)
- Catherine Mooney and Graeme Murray, Ian Hamilton Finlay & the Wild Hawthorn Press (Edinburgh: Graeme Murray, 1990)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party: Selected Poems (Worcester: Migrant Press, 1960)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Sea-bed and Other Stories (Edinburgh: Castle Wynd printers, 1958)
Public collections
- Arts Council Collection
- British Museum
- Government Art Collection
- Jupiter Artland
- Manchester Art Gallery
- National Galleries of Scotland
- Tate
- University of Edinburgh
Related organisations
- Glasgow School of Art (student )
- Poor. Old. Tired. Horse (founder )
- Wild Hawthorn Press (founder )
Related web links
- Contemporary Art Society
- Demarco Archive
- Getty Museum
- James Campbell, 'Ian Hamilton Finlay: the concrete poet as avant gardener', 16 November 2012
- Little Sparta: the Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay
- MoMA
- Official Page
- Scottish Poetry Library
- Victoria Miro
- William Allen Word & Image
Selected exhibitions
- Ian Hamilton Finlay features in Landscape and Imagination: From Gardens to Land Art at Compton Verney, Compton Verney, Warwickshire (2024)
- Marine: Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), City Art Centre, Edinburgh (2021)
- Beauty and revolution : the poetry and art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Kettle's Yard, Cambridge (2014)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Arnolfini, Bristol (2013)
- A posey: selected works by Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1999)
- Here & Now (group show), Serpentine Gallery, London (1995)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Victoria Miro, London (1988)
- Inter artes et naturam: Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris (1987)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton (1984)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Serpentine Gallery, London (1977)
- Ian Hamilton Finlay (solo exhibition), Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh (1969)
