Michael Vaughan, left, at Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1964, with fellow exhibitor, Patrick Proctor.
Michael Vaughan, painter and printmaker, was born in 1938 at Shipley. He studied at Bradford College of Art, 1956-60, where his art peers in London at that time included David Hockney, Norman Stevens, John Loker, Peter Kaye and David Oxtoby – collectively known as ‘The Bradford Mafia’ – a term coined by the artist, Edward Lucie-Smith in 1967.
From Bradford, he studied art at the Royal Academy School, 1960-63, and after graduating, Vaughan gained a Fellowship in Painting at Manchester College of Art and Design for a year.
His abstract work was first exhibited at a ‘New Generation’ show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1964, and was included in the ‘British Painting ’74’ held at the Hayward Gallery, London, 1974. His work was also included in an exhibition at Cartwright Hall, Bradford, 1976, and had a series of solo shows at the Hanover Gallery and Gimpel Fils in London, and in Milan. Vaughan’s work was also included in the ‘Norman Stevens Tribute Exhibition’ (one of the ‘Bradford Mafia’) at the Redfern Gallery, London, in 2008.
Image: Arts Council Collection
Michael Vaughan taught at both Manchester College of Art and Design and Hornsey College of Art and his work is in the collections: The Arts Council; Alfred East Art Gallery; British Council; Contemporary Arts Society; Harris Museum and Art Gallery; and Leicester County Council.
He married the sculptor, Lisa Lombardi and they lived in South Carolina, USA, and at Cazac, France. Shortly before Lisa died of cancer in 2011, they had a joint exhibition of their work at the Redfern Gallery in London. An exhibition catalogue was produced: Michael Vaughan, Paintings and Lisa Lombardi – Sculpture’ by Graham Vickers, published in 2011 by the Redfern Gallery, and the art reviewer from FM: Fame Magazine, wrote of the show :
Michael Vaughan’s arresting pictures are about the moment, the story. What is left out, the details that are presented and, more importantly, the ones that are missing, draw the viewer in. It’s an off-kilter view of the day-to-day stirring a sense of unease and rediscovery … It’s an Alice In Wonderland vision of the normal, the mundane even, emboldened by huge sweeps of colour, flat surface plains and the artist’s almost fetishistic choices. These paintings disturb and compel, they hint at a much fuller and complex story.
Image: from the Michael Vaughan & Lisa Lombardi joint show at the Redfern Gallery, 2014. Image: Fame Magazine