
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
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Head of UK and Ireland

Head of Department

Director
PROVENANCE:
With The Leicester Galleries, London
With The Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester
Private Collection, U.K.
EXHIBITED:
London, The Leicester Galleries, John Craxton, 12 May-9 June 1966, cat.no.21 (ill.b&w)
LITERATURE:
The Daily Telegraph, Artist's One-Man Show Reveals Promise, May 1966 (ill.b&w)
John Craxton first went to Crete in 1947, to visit a dancing sailor he had met in a Poros bar. Having completed national service in the Greek Navy, the ex-sailor had returned to work as a butcher in Heraklion market, but one evening in a taverna below deserted Knossos he again performed an acrobatic dance over an upturned chair which Craxton now recognised from the Minoan bull-leapers fresco as an extraordinary folk survival. He revisited the butcher theme in the 1960s, with the model here his photographer friend John Murphy.
We are grateful to Ian Collins for compiling this catalogue entry.