Sydney Klugman Artist

As a young man in Johannesburg, Sydney felt the need to move and to study fine art. Having moved to England he studied in Wimbledon, moving on to the OU for the History of Art, then Goldsmiths studying Art Therapy, which brought him a respect for the unconscious in art. He now lives just outside Newbury painting full-time and teaching from time to time. “South Africa continues to have an influence on my art and my passion. Many artists have accompanied me on my journey, from Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Rauschenberg, Bomberg, Nash, Lanyon... And to paraphrase Picasso, ‘I don’t seek; I find’.

For me it’s a process: forever searching for my own voice. A kind of rediscovery, a building on the past. My aim is always to reassess what I see”.

Colleague Clive Duncan writes, ‘There is a dualism in Sydney Klugman’s art. As a painter of figures and landscapes his subjects oscillate between the pictorial and the elusive; discovery, rediscovery and not the least, surprise.’ Clive Duncan FRBS RBA SPS