Heads by Lancelot Ribeiro at Ben Uri Gallery St John's Wood

It's a wish that has been realised some 14 years after his death with a show at Ben Uri Gallery in Boundary Road, St John's Wood.

Lancelot Ribeiro: Heads – In and Out of Our Time runs this autumn in partnership with the artist's estate and with the blessing of daughter Marsha Ribeiro.

The artist in his studio in Belsize Park in 1965 (Image: The estate of Lancelot Ribeiro)

She said: "The inspiration for this exhibition came from a wish my father frequently expressed, that he wanted an exhibition entitled ‘Heads - In & Out of Our Time.’

"As it didn’t materialise during his lifetime, it became something I hoped I, one day, would be able to fulfill on his behalf.

"The fact that some of his most experimental paintings - including a 1963 portrait of my mother - have been brought together at Ben Uri, is particularly touching for me. It is in my mind both a fitting tribute to his legacy and to his long-held wish."

The painter was born in 1933 into a Catholic Goan family in India and moved to England in 1950 where he stayed with his brother in Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill while studying part time at St Martin's School of Art.

Following the success of his first solo exhibition in Mumbai, he moved permanently to the UK in 1962, living and working in Belsize Park before moving to a flat on Haverstock Hill until his death in 2010.

Untitled Head 1963 by Lancelot Ribeiro (Image: The estate of Lancelot Ribeiro)

A passionate advocate for artists from the subcontinent, he fought endemic prejudice against those from minority backgrounds, co-founding the Indian Painters' Collective, UK, and initiating the exhibition Six Indian Painters in 1964.

He also exhibited alongside his half-brother F. N. Souza and founded the group Indian Artists UK in 1978.

Ribeiro's heads examine notions of power through subjects he listed as: "colonialists, kings, tyrants, Christ (resurrected), tycoons, women and thugs."

The exhibition boasts 17 paintings and three drawings focusing on portraiture and heads from the 1960s and the 1990s.

Paranoid 1965 by Lancelot Ribeiro (Image: The Ben Uri Gallery)

Examples in the exhibition include the monumental Crowned King (c.1963) and King Lear (1964).

Ribeiro’s close friend and fellow poet R. Parthasarathy has suggested that Ribeiro's ‘true subject’ was his ‘origins – Goan roots, estrangement from India, and exile in London’.

In later work, Ribeiro often worked on a large scale, employing a brilliant 
palette and taking an imaginative approach to reinvigorating the portrayal of the human head in works including the deconstructed Seeing Through (1989).

His work is now held in the Ben Uri, British Museum, Burgh House, Tate and V&A collections among others.

A series of talks and events and an online publication with essays will accompany the exhibition. A supporting display features diverse paintings, sculptures and works on paper of heads and portraits from the Ben Uri collection by artists including Moich Abrahams, Frank Auerbach, David Breuer-Weil, Dodo Susanna Jacobs, Paul Richards, and Bruno Simon. 

Lancelot Ribeiro: Heads – In and Out of Our Time runs from 18th September until 29th November. buru.org.uk