Art - Geoffrey Lintott

Whether it was due to the influence of genetics or environment, this Seaford-based painter and printmaker seems to have inherited both his talents and career trajectory. His parents were artists who were schooled in Brighton. His father later became an art teacher and was eventually appointed head of Southport School of Art. At the age of eighteen, Geoffrey retraced these steps by returning to the South and attending the same art college. Later he too became a teacher before going on to become Senior Lecturer at London’s Goldsmith’s College.

I am told all of this by his widow Cynthia, (also an artist), who is co-ordinating the exhibition this week at Thebes Gallery. I have only seen two images for the show so far but as I comment to Cynthia, they are remarkably different. “He was very wide-ranging”, she says, “The exhibition will span the period between 1951 and the present day which covers his print-making and painting. But that doesn’t include his early work, which was influenced by the Romantics, or his later painting of icons - mainly because it was commissioned work so we don’t have any examples.” Geoffrey was best known in the area for his printmaking, and his bold lino-cuts of architectural buildings in Venice and Greece. “He was really drawn towards buildings and he loved the Mediterranean”, she tells me. “He first visited Spain in the 1950s which is when he fell in love with it.” Alongside the prints and the paintings will be photographs of lost works and a scrap book produced by Cynthia which explains his methods.