The Big City – London celebrates and showcases some of the Gallery’s largest paintings

The most extensive collection of large-scale London paintings in the world has opened at the City of London Corporation’s Guildhall Art Gallery.

The Big City – London painted on a grand scale celebrates the talent of 19 artists and showcases some of the largest paintings in the Gallery’s collection.

At the heart of The Big City exhibition will be a series of pieces by David Hepher.

The works were gifted to the City Corporation by the artist in 2022.

Hepher’s career spans six decades and for the last 40 years, his practice has focused almost exclusively on London, in particular, the inner-city estates of the 1960s and 1970s.

Hepher’s urban landscapes explore the scale and austere grandeur of post-war social planning and urban regeneration.

Painted on a monumental scale and across multiple panels, his works can take up to a year to complete.

His paintings are large-scale and ambitious, conveying his technical skill and trademark style.

Graffiti tags, based on Hepher’s own observations, adorn the paintings in various colours, while the canvases are primed with a mixture of concrete, PVA, and wood to create the illusion of tower-block walls, onto which Hepher has applied paint to mimic the small streams of slime that often stain concrete structures.

The exhibition includes a four-piece panel installation by John Bartlett and gigantic works of art from Frank O. Salisbury and Terence Cuneo.

Guildhall Art Gallery is home to one of the world’s most extensive collections of London paintings and one of the largest oil paintings on display in the UK is John Singleton Copley’s, Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar.

Chairwoman of the City of London Corporation’s Culture, Heritage, and Libraries Committee, Wendy Hyde, said: “It is usually very challenging for art galleries to showcase so many paintings of this size at the same time and in one area, so The Big City will provide a unique, not to say, positively overwhelming, experience for visitors.

“Given the scale of some of these huge masterpieces, some may even feel that they are in the painting, rather than viewing it.
“I am looking forward to hearing encouraging feedback from the team behind the exhibition.”

The Big City opened on a pay what you can basis and runs until April 23.

Curator-led and guided tours will also be available to book daily during the exhibition.

 

Picture: The Big City Picture: Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London Corporation