Gary Wragg

GARY WRAGG  British, born 1946

Gary Wragg, born in 1946, first attended the High Wycombe School of Art before moving to London. There he studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, where he won a Rotary Travelling Prize to Florence and Rome as well as the Lord Carron Prize awarded by Bryan Robertson. He continued post-graduate painting at the Slade School of Fine Art and won a Boise Travelling Scholarship to USA and Mexico, which he took in 1972. He also received an Arts Council grant in 1975 and a London Arts Association grant in 1978.

Gary Wragg’s trips to America, first to New York and Provincetown to visit Jack Tworkov, between 1971 and 1974, and the time he spent in Springs, East Hampton with Willem de Kooning in 1985, were highly significant in his artistic development.

His first one-man exhibition was held at Acme Gallery, London in 1976, with a subsequent successful show in 1979.   Gary Wragg exhibited regularly at the Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London, between 1980 and 1989 and held a series of important solo and group exhibitions at Flowers East, London, between 1996 and 2010.

In his work Gary Wragg explores from what he calls his ‘treasure chest’, a traditional lineage of Poussin, Titian, Rubens, Goya, Delacroix, Cézanne, Bonnard, Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning.

Since the late seventies, Gary Wragg’s love for painting has integrated with his passion for the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi Chuan. Wragg has found that the gestures and controlled movements of the discipline have formed a parallel in the painting and his work has subsequently evolved from the vocabulary and legacy of Abstract Expressionism to his investigation of energy painting.

Selected solo exhibitions:

1976

Gary Wragg, Acme Gallery, London

1979

Gary Wragg, Acme Gallery, London

1979

Peterloo Gallery, Manchester

1982

Gary Wragg, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1983

Gary Wragg, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry

1984

Gary Wragg, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1984

Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

1986

Gary Wragg, Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London

1989

Jean Wainwright, Chiswick, London

1989

Open Studio, Hackney, London

1989

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1990

Goldsmiths Gallery, London

1990

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1991

Gallery 10, London

1991

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1992

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1993

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1994

Studio Show, West Hampstead, London

1996

Gary Wragg: Works on Paper, Gallery M, Flowers East, London

1997

Gary Wragg, Flowers East, London

1999

Gary Wragg, Flowers East, London

1999

King Street Gallery, Sydney, Australia

2000

The Quiet Paintings, Flowers East, London

2003

Flowers Central, London

2003

Studio Show, Vyner Street, London

2006

Gary Wragg, Burgh House, Hampstead, London

2008

Flowers East, London

2008

Gary Wragg, Mason’s Yard Gallery, London

2010

Gary Wragg: Early Works 1968-1969, Alan Wheatley Art, London

2012

Gary Wragg: Spontaneity of Movements, Alan Wheatley Art, London

2014

Gary Wragg: Constant Within the Change, Clifford Chance, London

Public collections include:
Arts Council of Great Britain
Barclays de Zoete Wedd, London
Contemporary Arts Society, London
DeBeers Consolidated Mines, London
Eastern Arts Association, Leicester
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa
Pompidou Centre, Paris, France
Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham
Saatchi Collection, London
Slade School of Art Collection, London
University College, London
Victoria & Albert Museum, London