Footnotes

Provenance
Collection of the artist, London
Estate of the artist, London (by descent from the above in 2014)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2016

Exhibited
London, Hoxton Gallery, Keith Cunningham — Unseen Paintings 1954-1960, 30 September - 13 October 2016
London, HENI Gallery, Keith Cunningham - The Lost Master, 13 June - 4 July 2025



Keith Cunningham, a contemporary of prominent figures such as Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, and Frank Bowling, was an enigmatic and dynamic artist who is today regaining his rightful position within the art historical canon.

Vibrant in hue and pulsating in spirit, Pink Head is suffused by an atmosphere of immediacy—of a palpable presence merging with a vivid mental impression—achieves condensed expression in this painting. The directness of Cunningham's portraits is paradoxical, as his 'models' were typically painted from memory rather than from direct observation. They were intuited and absorbed into his mind's eye rather than meticulously recorded. Pink Head exemplifies the artist's powerful yet liminal portraits that command attention through their tension and ambiguity. For Cunningham, the pursuit of knowledge—specifically, the act of translating vision and memory into paint—appears to have been as much about loss as about discovery. Seeing is also, inevitably, a matter of not seeing: of striving to apprehend an essence that remains elusive. The present work was executed between 1953-1960, during the height of his artistic output.

Originating from Australia, Cunningham arrived in London in early 1949 and enrolled in a design course at the esteemed Central School of Art and Design. In 1952, he was admitted to the Royal College of Art, where he came into contact with Auerbach and other influential artists of the period. Francis Bacon, who frequently visited the RCA during Cunningham's tenure there, arguably shares the greatest affinity with Cunningham's artistic sensibility. Emotive and introspective, the rawness of mood and execution evident in Cunningham's paintings parallels Bacon's widely celebrated oeuvre.

Cunningham's paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, which remained sealed in his Battersea flat for half a century until his death in 2014, stand apart from the conventional narrative of British art. The artist exhibited alongside London Group figures such as Vanessa Bell, Eileen Agar, and David Bomberg in the late 1950s, yet his artistic trajectory quieted on the cusp of recognition. His final exhibition was held at a small bookshop off Kensington High Street in December 1966; the following year, he confined painting to a private room. As a result, his paintings exist in a kind of exile from context, akin to the artefacts of distant antiquity. In the absence of a broader narrative, our focus is directed solely toward the works themselves. Perhaps he intended this. "If you ask him questions," his widow Bobby Hillson has recalled, "he was brilliant at prevaricating...brilliant at evading anything he didn't want to talk about." The works are thus left to speak—or, indeed, to prevaricate—for themselves.

The intensity and depth of Pink Head recall the works of the great Spanish artists whom Cunningham admired. The atmospheric and dramatic sensibilities of Goya, Velázquez, and Zurbarán are unmistakable in this layered and theatrical portrait. Many of Cunningham's 'heads' embody a kind of elusiveness—the capacity of facial expression to resist, rather than invite, finite interpretation. Pink Head imposes a distance between subject and viewer, while simultaneously evoking a contrary sense of immediacy and proximity. This closeness is as deeply felt as it is perceived, the energetic brushstrokes engendering movement, sensation, and aura.

Cunningham's paintings are multivocal and allusive, yet they rarely feel derivative. The echoes or voices of other artists are ultimately subsumed into a private exploration of the very nature of haunting itself. In particular, they probe the capacity of lived experience to replay and refract within the mind before assuming material form on the canvas. Although the artist ceased exhibiting his work at an early stage, paintings such as Pink Head demonstrate a timeless and enduring quality that is currently being rediscovered by critics, art historians, and collectors across the globe. It is evident that Cunningham's oeuvre is as vital and invigorating as the celebrated works of his contemporaries who have long received international acclaim. Pink Head stands as a striking and resonant example of the artist's remarkable output—one that will undoubtedly sustain its enduring relevance for years to come.



We would like to thank Dr. Laura Spada for her assistance in cataloguing this work.


Please click here to watch a HENI Talks film, where Damien Hirst, Peter Doig, Sir Frank Bowling, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ralph Taylor, amongst others, celebrate Keith Cunningham and uncover the artist's "Lost Masterpieces."