Deanna Petherbridge

Deanna Petherbridge (11 February 1939 – 8 January 2024) was a South African and British artist, writer and curator.

Petherbridge's practice was drawing-based (predominantly pen and ink drawings on paper), although she also produced large-scale murals and designed for the theatre.

Her publications in the area of art and architecture were concerned with contemporary as well as historical matters, and in latter years she concentrated on writing about drawing.

Petherbridge was born in Pretoria, South Africa on 11 February 1939.

She attended Pretoria High School for Girls and obtained a degree in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand.

After a post-graduate year teaching in the department she emigrated to the UK in 1960.

In 1967 she acquired a house on the island of Sikinos dividing her studio practice for many years between London and Greece and after 2003 between London and Italy with a studio in Umbria (2004–2015).

After early years as a painter, producing soft-sculpture and sometimes employing anti-war imagery, Petherbridge turned to monochromatic pen and ink drawing as her primary medium in the 1970s.

Studies of Islamic art and architecture, vernacular building and historical fortifications made during early travels in Europe, the Maghreb and Middle East were the basis of early exhibitions of geometric drawings; later Hindu temple architecture, ruins and vernacular structures became an important source for drawings.

Her work continues to employ architectonic metaphors and in recent years she has become increasingly interested in reflections on place and landscape.

Petherbridge began contributing reviews and articles to Architectural Review in 1979 and has written extensively for specialist journals and the daily press including Architects' Journal, Crafts Magazine, Building Design and the Financial Times in the 1980s, when she ran a regular column in Art Monthly commenting on commissioning, sponsorship and the social structures of visual art communities in the United Kingdom.

She has written many catalogue essays and chapters in books and in recent years has published in academic journals on a wide range of contemporary and historical issues in art and architecture, with a particular focus on drawing.

Symbolic representations of war were the subject of the 1980s around the time of the Falkland conflict.

Petherbridge's teaching career included sessional lectureships at the Architectural Association, London (1981–85), the Fine Art departments of the University of Reading and Middlesex Polytechnic (1984–1987).

In celebration of drawing as a portable, immediate and expeditious medium, Petherbridge has produced work in other venues than her studio while undertaking drawing residencies at Manchester City Art Gallery, UK(1982) Lalit Kala Akademi Studios Calcutta (British Council sponsored) (1986), Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (2003), Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan (2005) and the National Art School, Sydney (2011).

Her public commissions include designing sets and costumes for The Royal Ballet in collaboration with choreographer Ashley Page A Broken Set of Rules (1984) and Bloodlines (1990); and One by Nine (1987), choreographer Jennifer Jackson, Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet.

She has undertaken extensive lecture tours in other countries, some under the auspices of the British Council for example in India (1985-6 and 1987-8) and South East Asia (1994–95).

She was commissioned by the Artistic Records Committee of the Imperial War Museum, London (1989).

She also undertook a mural on four flours for the curved foyer wall of the Symphony Hall, International Conference Centre, Birmingham (1991).

In 1991 Petherbridge curated the trans-historical touring exhibition The Primacy of drawing: An Artist's View for National Touring, The South Bank Centre and co-selected the collaborative exhibition, Materia Medica: A New Cabinet of Medicine and Art, The Wellcome Institute, London (1995–96).

She was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art (1995 -2001) where she launched the Centre for Drawing Research, the first doctoral programme in drawing in the UK.

There have also been lecture tours in Australia (1995, 2003, 2011, 2015), Pakistan (2005), USA (2010), Puerto Rico (2013).

In 1996 she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drawing and teaching.

Extended lecture series in the UK include: Contemporary Drawing: Exploring the Unknown, Tate Millbank (January–March 1997), the BBC Radio Three broadcast series The Outline Around the Shadow (10–14 February 1997) and Drawing towards Enquiry at the National Gallery London (February–March 2006) in association with Camberwell College of Arts.

This was followed by The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy, (1997) National Touring for the Arts Council of England.

This exhibition moved to an extended showing renamed ''Corps à vif.

She was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Art (FRCA) 1997, an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon. FRIBA)1998 and Honorary Doctorate in Design (Hon DDes) Kingston University, London, 2001.

Art et anatomie'', (1998) at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, co-curated with Claude Ritschard and Andrea Carlino.

She was a Research Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2001– 2002).

She was Arnolfini Professor of Drawing at the University of the West of England, Bristol (2002–2006) (appointed Emeritus Professor of Drawing in 2006) and Professor of Drawing at the University of Lincoln (2007–2009).

She has supervised a number of PhD students and has delivered lectures, conference and symposium papers internationally.

Petherbridge has also curated a number of exhibitions of contemporary drawers including Drawing as Vital Practice, Pitzhanger Manor Gallery & House, London (2007) and Narratives of Arrival and Resolution: Abstract Works on Paper, Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London (2013).

She also held a research fellowship at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2007).

The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice was published June 2010 and curated exhibitions included The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy, 1997, Witches and Wicked Bodies, 2013.

Witches and Wicked Bodies at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, (2013) was re-curated for the Prints and Drawings Gallery at the British Museum (2014–2015) and Artists at Work, was co-curated with Anita Viola Sganzerla, The Courtauld Drawings Gallery, London (2018).

She celebrated a retrospective exhibition of her drawings at Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (2 December 2016 – 4 June 2017) accompanied by the monograph Deanna Petherbridge: Drawing and Dialogue, Circa Press, 2016.

These have again become the dominant theme for large multi-panelled drawings, such as The Destruction of the City of Homs, 2016 (Tate, London; on display in Walk Through British Art: 60 Years).

In 2019 she was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute, London.

Deanna Petherbridge died at her London home on 8 January 2024, at the age of 84.