The Great Atlantic Map Works Gallery

Lydia Corbett was born Sylvette David in Paris on 14th Nov 1934. Her father was an influential art dealer and painter, whose Champs Elysee Gallery, David & Garnier, exhibits the now famous Bernard Buffet. Her mother was an award-winning student at the Academie Julian, Paris.

Due to a highly unconventional childhood, Lydia has always been free from the normal constraints of learnt art. As a young child her life was spent between Provence and a small island off the Cote D'azure where her days passed in complete freedom, playing in the sea and admiring nature.

At the age of 16, Lydia and her brother were sent to Summerhill School in Suffolk.

She returned to France with her fiancé and in 1953 met Picasso in the small, southern town of Vallauris. It was a wonderful experience which changed her life. In 3 months, Picasso painted about 40 paintings of 'Sylvette', as she was then called.

Having moved to Paris, Lydia had her first child, Isabel, in 1963. Her father encouraged her to paint but it wasn't until she was 45 and living at Dartington Hall with 3 children, that she began to paint in earnest.

Lydia Corbett’s work that was shown at The Great Arwenack Street Atlantic Gallery in Falmouth is shown here:
/www.greatatlantic.co.uk/corbett