East Sussex exhibition remembers The Two Roberts - "Artists, Lovers, Outsiders"

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun: Artists, Lovers, Outsiders runs from October 15-April 12 at Charleston in Lewes.

These days the Two Roberts are essentially footnotes but back in the day, as Damian says, they were in fact the main story.

Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun were two Ayrshire artists who first met at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. They became an infamous duo, both lovers and creative partners, playing a vital role in mid-20th century British art, influencing contemporaries including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and John Minton.

Damian’s exhibition, the first in England since 1962, surveys their remarkable creative journey from 1930s Glasgow to wartime Europe, through London during the Blitz, ending in tragedy in 1962. The exhibition traces their spectacular rise and fall and puts them back where they were – at the centre of an extraordinary creative landscape in a rapidly changing world.

The exhibition includes their time in Lewes where they lived from 1947-49, supported by the Miller sisters, patrons connected to the Bloomsbury group. Through a display of paintings, lithographs, etchings, drawings, and archival materials, the show celebrates the personal and artistic bond which shaped their lives and careers leaving a lasting impact on European modernism.

As Damian says: “They were young, Scottish, gay, working class, wildly talent... and just wild! I was smitten with them. I had come across them as footnotes but I'd never had the time to fall in love with them until the lockdown, and I do think you need to fall in love with characters when you're going to spend a lot of time with them. And I haven't done with them yet. There's still more than I want to say.

“The novel is a love story about two artists, and the exhibition is an art story about two lovers. And it is the first show of both of them in England since 1962. Why? That's for the art establishment to explain but I think that fashion changed in the art world around the time that Colquhoun died. I think it was partly to do with that but I think a lot of their champions in the art world also died young. I also think they burnt a lot of bridges in their lifetime. And I also think that there is a classism that plays a part in it all. Also they were working-class artists that needed to be paid and I think some people thought of them as abrasive or greedy but they were just making a living. So I think it was a combination of all of these things.

“But I think the time is right to be thinking about them now. When they arrived in London during the war, they knew nobody and had no social advantages at all. It's remarkable what they did, how they went on to be photographed by Vogue, filmed by Ken Russell and to be so celebrated. I admire their tenacity and their grit and their belief in each other. Also they were a couple when it was not just illegal but terrifying. Friends of theirs went to jail or were blackmailed, and they certainly knew people who took their own lives. They were brave and they were bold, and I want them to be celebrated again in the way that they once were. I do think that that can happen. I think now more than ever we are more willing to understand how an artist's identity and the challenges that they face during their lifetime can impact on their work. I think we are now more willing now to ask those questions.”

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. He is the author of Maggie & Me, Sunday Times Memoir of the Year and now a major play with the National Theatre of Scotland. His debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and Book of the Year in the Observer, Guardian and Financial Times. He presents the BBC’s Big Scottish Book Club on BBC television and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.