Long-awaited Bellany retrospective is revealed

Published on 16/11/2012 02:43

AT the ripe age of 70 he is still painting and drawing daily – despite a glittering career across more than half a century and a string of health problems.

Now the National Galleries of Scotland has unveiled its long-awaited tribute to the work of John Bellany, the East Lothian-born artist now widely regarded as one of the nation’s greatest cultural assets. The first major career retrospective of Bellany’s work to be staged since 1986, the exhibition now dominating the Scottish National Gallery on The Mound, features more than 75 pieces of work.

They range from work produced at the city’s art school and paintings hung outside the railings of the same gallery during the Edinburgh Festivals of 1964 and 1965, to recent landscapes and some of his famous religious themes inspired by alcohol problems.Bellany, one of Scotland’s most influential post-war painters, was born in Port Seton in 1942. After attending Edinburgh College of Art in the early 1960s he relocated to London

The exhibition includes work charting his convalescence from a liver transplant in the 1980s.

John Bellany: A Passion For Life is at the Scottish National Gallery from this Saturday until 27 January, 2013.