Peter Kinley was born Peter Nikolaus Arthur Eduard Schwarz to a Jewish father and a German mother in Vienna, Austria in 1926. Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation) of Austria, in 1938 he was sent on a <em>Kindertransport</em> to England. After serving in the British army during the war, he trained at Düsseldorf Academy (1948–9) and St. Martin's School of Art (1949–53). He produced figurative work - not in the 19th Century sense of realism or naturalism - but based on careful observation of the subject, and was often inspired by non-Western art forms, such as Indian painting.
Painter and teacher Peter Kinley (né Peter Nikolaus Arthur Eduard Schwarz) was born into a cultured and artistic family in Vienna, Austria in 1926. His Austrian-Jewish father, Arthur, was director of a private bank and his mother was from Germany; his uncle was the Austrian painter Fritz Swarz-Waldegg. The family lived for some years in Berlin, where Kinley enjoyed a privileged childhood, until the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in 1935 forced their return to Austria.
Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation) of Austria in 1938 Kinley was sent on a Kindertransport to England, where he was fostered by a Catholic family in Lytham St Anne's, Lancashire. In 1944, aged 17, Kinley enlisted and served in the British army. His parents fled to France via Switzerland. Arthur was interned but managed to escape and was hidden by the French Resistance. Kinley was finally reunited with them in December 1945. in 1946 Kinley was instrumental in tracking down the German Nazi Party official Josef Grohé. Kinley gained British citizenship in 1947 and officially changed his name in 1950. He returned briefly to Germany, training at Düsseldorf Academy (1948–9) and then back in London at St. Martin's School of Art (1949–53), where John Napper was among his tutors. Kinley participated in Six Young Contemporaries at Gimpel Fils in 1951 and 1953, where he also held his first solo exhibition in 1954. The show featured a series of nudes characterised by subtle outlines which ‘made even sex uncertain’; the critic Stephen Bone noted in the Manchester Guardian that ‘his figures lack features but have a feeling of solemn weight and presence and sometimes he does achieve curious, interesting effects with his thick viscous paint’ (Bone 1956, p. 5). In 1954 Kinley married his second cousin, Monika Wolf (1925-2014) a fellow Austrian-Jewish refugee, who became an authority on outsider art. In 1956 Kinley contributed a ‘most arresting seascape’ to the exhibition The Seasons organised by the Contemporary Art Society at the Tate Gallery (The Times 1956, p. 10), the same year he was selected by the British national jury (alongside Alan Davie, Ben Nicholson and Philip Sutton) for the Guggenheim Foundation art awards in New York. Other group exhibitions included Redfern Gallery (1955), Arthur Jeffress Gallery (1957), and several at Tooth & Sons. Kinley held a second solo show in New York at Paul Rosenberg & Co. in 1961.
Described as ‘De Stael’s most serious and gifted follower’ (Kinley 2006) - the French painter was an important influence - Kinley produced figurative work, not in the 19th Century sense of realism or naturalism, but based on careful observation of the subject. However, he was often defined by critics as an ‘abstract’ or ‘semi -abstract’ artist. Kinley’s subjects included landscapes, figures in interiors, nudes, flowers and animals. From 1965 onwards his work became flatter and apparently simpler, though it remained largely figurative. His lively and luminous images, simultaneously humorous and solemn, included gabled houses, planes, cows, submarines and cars. His paintings, ‘daring in their simplicity’, were the result of ‘a process of distillation, a means of seeking a particular truth tied up with the belief in an innocent eye, a purity of vision’ (Durden 1994).
Aspiring to a childlike vision of the world, Kinley eliminated perspective, pursuing the essence of his subjects and paring down forms to their most fundamental shapes. Animals in the landscape frequently appeared in Kinley's work of the 1970s, when he was living in Corsham in Wiltshire. Aware of animal rights issues, he explained that he 'frequently painted animals to reassert, among other things, their right to respect in a culture which accords them only marginal consideration' (Tate Gallery). Kinley was also interested in Eastern cultures and developed a deep knowledge of Islamic art and architecture, collecting Indian paintings and artefacts, which represented a great source of inspiration for his paintings. Kinley taught at St Martin’s (1954–64), Wimbledon School of Art, Bath Academy of Art and Bath College of Higher Education (1971–88). In 1982 he had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and in 1986 a solo show at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Kinley returned often to his native Vienna; visiting Austria for the last time in 1988, he commented to a radio interviewer ‘I am Austrian in spite of everything. I love Austria’ (Catherine Kinley 2005). Peter Kinley died in Wiltshire, England on 8 September 1988, shortly after retiring. At the time of his death he was working on the series England, relating to his arrival here as a child refugee. His work is represented in UK public collections, including Tate, Arts Council, British Council and the V&A. The Peter Kinley Painting Prize was established in 1971 and ran for ten years at Bath Academy of Art (now Bath Spa University's Bath School of Art, Film and Media), before being re-inaugurated in 2020 as a gift from his second wife, Catherine Kinley.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Peter Kinley]
Publications related to [Peter Kinley] in the Ben Uri Library