"Moon/King: The Work and Friendship of Phillip King and Jeremy Moon – 1956 to 1973" by Beth Williamson

Thomas Dane Gallery, London
26 January – 20 April 2024

When Phillip King (1934-2021) and Jeremy Moon (1934-73) met in 1956, they were students at Christ’s College, Cambridge. King was studying modern languages and Moon was studying law and, coincidentally, they lived in the same street. King spent time in Cambridge on a self-taught sculptural practice that saw him exhibit in the local Heffer Gallery. He invited Anthony Caro (1924-2013), whom he greatly admired, to see his exhibition, then took classes with Caro at Saint Martin’s School of Art (1957-58) in London. The following year, King taught at Saint Martin’s, as well as acting as an assistant to Henry Moore. Moon worked in advertising and enrolled only briefly at the Central School of Art in London. Devoting himself entirely to art in the 1960s, Moon also taught sculpture at Central Saint Martins and painting at Chelsea School of Art. He submitted a sculpture to the Young Contemporaries in 1962, winning first prize, thanks to King who was a co-judge for sculpture. Moon and King became firm friends in Cambridge, a friendship that lasted when they moved to London and until Moon’s premature death following a motorbike accident in 1973.

Their common experience of growing up during the second world war, as well as the undoubted impact of the postwar depression era, saw them seeking out ways to reimagine painting and sculpture in more hopeful and vibrant forms, shedding the outside world and all its forms for pure abstraction. Both looked to Frank Stella and David Smith in America, but also to Caro in Britain. King was probably Caro’s best-known student even though they were near-contemporaries.

Read full article at studiointernational.com