Biography
Austin / Desmond Fine Art initially operated from stables near Ascot, from 1979 - opening their first gallery in 1986 at Sunninghill and moving to its current location in Bloomsbury in 1988. The gallery’s primary focus has been in Modern British art including: Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Lucian Freud, Naum Gabo, Ivon Hitchens, Leon Kossoff, Bridget Riley and Graham Suterland, Victor Pasmore, Anthony Hill, Mary Martin and Kenneth Martin. It has specialised in work associated with the St Ives group of artists, including: Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Paul Feiler, Margaret Mellis, Terry Frost and Peter Lanyon and selected artists who have been the subject of solo shows are: Prunella Clough, Francis Davison, Wyndham Lewis, David Jones, Keith Vaughan and Alfred Wallis. For over a decade the gallery has participated in major European and American art fairs focusing on International Post-war art such as European artists including Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, François Morellet, and Günther Uecker and Americans such as Alexander Calder, Dan Flavin and Sol Lewitt. Recently the galley has formed an important collection of Concrete and Neo-Concrete art from Latin America with artists such as Hélio Oiticia, Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Raphael Soto and Sergio Camargo.
