Max Eden at University of Liverpool

The Max Eden Retrospective opened last night in the Senate House foyer of Liverpool University so I took a quick look before moving onto Urban Coffee. Eden graduated from the Liverpool School of Art in 1951, before studying abroad, first at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Copenhagen. He returned to the North West in 1960, and taught for the next twenty five years at the Southport College of Art.
So he has built up a large body of work over that period and there are 30 pieces here, mostly oil on canvas. Pictured here is one of a series of paintings (the original is in colour) on the dancing theme: ‘Quick Step’, ‘Latino’, ‘Twist Step’, ‘Come Dancing’ etc. all painted in the 1990’s.
I prefer his earlier work, in fact the first one ‘Man in space’ (1964) and a large canvas at the end of the room entitled ‘Topiary’ (c1970) is a simple but effective picture of 3 shrubs shaped into wine glasses which have a lovely green glow.
Runs until November 25th 2005 and Max Eden will be giving a talk on his life and work on October 19th.