A leading figure in Modern British Art, Prunella Clough is celebrated for her distinctive focus on the overlooked landscapes of post-war Britain. Closely associated with the Neo-Romanticist movement, Clough moved beyond conventional beauty to find poetic resonance in industrial scenes and urban margins, offering a uniquely modern vision that helped redefine British painting in the 20th century.
Often recognised as one of the most significant British artist’s of the Post-War years, Prunella Clough became closely linked with the Post-War Neo-Romanticist School in Britain, particularly with John Minton, Keith Vaughan and Robert Colquhoun.
She largely turned her back on picturesque landscapes, spending her career exploring industrial wastelands and the urban fringes of society of British cities and ports. Her paintings are often a memory of the scene, exploring the everyday in a new way and investigating a poetry in objects often considered prosaic.
Clough studied at Chelsea School of Art, and during the Second World War worked in the Office of War Information as a draughtsman of charts and maps. She became a highly influential teacher in the Post-War years teaching at the Chelsea School of Art (1956-69) and Wimbledon School of Art (1966-97).
Three months before her death in 1999 she was awarded the Jerwood Painting Prize, and posthumously she was a awarded a major exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London in 2007.
