Alfred Cohen (1920-2001) came to Europe in 1949, living in Paris and Heidelberg before settling in Britain in 1960. In anticipation of exhibitions planned for his centenary next year, art historians, curators and critics assess his unique and vibrant work.
Following on from a successful study day at the Centre for American Art at the Courtauld Institute in 2018, speakers will consider Cohen’s life, contexts, and influences. They will evaluate the distinct phases of his work: the painting of the 1950s, inspired by the Impressionists and the Ecole de Paris; the ambitious and more abstract structures of his paintings of London, the Thames and Docklands in the early 1960s; the raw expressionism of his studies in the Commedia dell’Arte; the tactile compression of his pictures of Kent and the Channel coasts in the late 1960s and 1970s; and the more expansive patterning of his work in Norfolk in his last two decades.