Paul Feiler (born 1918)
Born in 1918 in Frankfurt am Main, Paul Feiler came to England in 1933 ahead of the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 he studied at the Slade School and between 1941 and 1946 taught at Eastbourne and Radley, then the West of England College, where he became Head of Painting and stayed until 1975. In 1949 he first visited Cornwall and in1953 bought a chapel at Kerris, Paul, near Penzance where he now still lives which had been Stanhope Forbes’ first studio in Cornwall. Paul Feiler has always been concerned with the architecture of space and the ambiguity of our visual experiences. From the early 1950s, when he became known for his gestural abstractions inspired by the structure of natural forms, to his recent work expressing shrine-like portals, Feilers’ paintings are sensitive constructions using space, tone and light, leading to simplification. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in London, the Arnolfini Bristol, Edinburgh, Southampton, and a retrospective in 1995/6 at the Tate Gallery, St Ives. In September 2005 the Tate St Ives showed work spanning six decades of the artist’s career.
