Exhibition - Eric Gill

In 1989 a controversial biography of the letter-cutter, typographer, sculptor and wood engraver Eric Gill, written by Fiona McCarthy, was published by ABC. The book suggested that the pious reputation he had built up in a life devoted to aesthetic simplicity, worship and creativity in a number of rural mini-communities (including two in Ditchling) was somewhat tarnished. Backing up her argument with evidence from his own diaries, the biographer revealed Gill was as driven by increasingly perverse sexual desires as by his homespun back-to-basics (converted) Catholic philosophy. He had a long-running affair with his sister, regularly buggered his three daughters, and even carried out experimental sexual practices with his dog. The shockwaves reverberating from the publication led to a renewal of interest in the eclectic body of work of the Brighton-born artist. He is now thought by many to be the greatest artist-craftsman of the twentieth century.
Gill could never stay in one place for too long, but he lived and worked in Ditchling, first in the village, then on the Common, for 17 years, from 1907 to 1923, and it was there that he established his artistic reputation. Trained as an architect, he soon became a freelance letter-cutter, but didn’t catch the public eye until he started turning his hand to sculpture. His first exhibition in London, backed by Roger Fry, was an enormous success. Gill, disdainful of the pretensions of the art world, produced a body of work mixing the sacred with the profane, while increasingly devoting himself to a back-to-the-earth lifestyle in Ditchling; first at Sopers, then at Hopkins Crank, surrounding himself with apprentices.