by Christine Trevett
Part Two: Changing the face of Art in Wales
In the years of war, and in the 1950s and beyond, Arthur Giardelli, the evacuee to Merthyr, would prove to be very active for art and artists in Wales. In 1956 with artist Heinz Koppel and others he was a founder member of firstly the South Wales Group (later The Welsh Group) of artists and then in 1956 of the 56 Group Wales. (https://56groupwales.co.uk/Arthur-Giardelli.html ).
He soon became its president and remained so until 1998, when he was made life president. At the time art in, and from, Wales got little attention and kudos among the art establishment. The 56 Group forefronted modernism in Welsh art and Giardelli, Koppel and others had helped to bring wider European trends to it. Through such groups Welsh artists got opportunities to exhibit in country wide touring exhibitions, so bringing attention to work from Wales. There was regular lobbying of institutions and politicians on behalf of art and artists, so that art galleries, museums and private collections came to have many more items by such contemporary Wales based artists. Giardelli’s conversation was sometimes peppered with phrases in other languages and phrases from Dante and Racine and he had collected European artwork since the 1930s. Here was a well travelled linguist and the man who helped to facilitate exhibitions in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and elsewhere, as well.
So what of his own work as an artist? By the end of the 1940s he had moved from the Merthyr area but he was still ardently promoting adult education and the accessibility of art. He taught for the WEA and for University College Cardiff. In 1979 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of University College Aberystwyth, for apart from his many other activities, now based in west Wales he had taught in that university’s Department of Extra Mural Studies in the 1960s and 70s. He lectured extensively overseas too, was a committee member of CASW (the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, founded 1937) and from 1965 to 1975 was on the Welsh Arts Council arts committee. More than one film was made about him and for services to the Arts in Wales Arthur Giardelli was awarded MBE in 1973.
His own art was not being neglected. At the same time he was creating and exhibiting his own work in galleries in London, Oxford and Wales. A clue to an aspect of his style lies in the title of a film which BBC Wales made in 1967. It was See What the Next Tide Brings. This conjures up not just the importance of the sea for him in the landscape where he then lived in Pendine, Carmarthenshire but also the serendipity of the finds from which he had created artwork since the latter half of the 1950s. There were abstract constructions in relief, formal in style, collage and utilizing both found natural objects and scrap manmade objects. Shells, slate and wood, watch parts and glass, cut up brassware, string, paper and other materials figured. The works evoked nature and the seasons. His ‘Pembrokeshire Panel’ can be seen in Cyfarthfa Castle Museum & Art Gallery in Merthyr Tydfil. His work is found in galleries from the Tate in London to others in Prague, Dublin, New York and elsewhere, in museums and private collections, whether in pen and ink, mixed media or construction from found objects.
In 1969 Arthur bought the former school house ‘The Golden Plover’ near Warren, Castlemartin in Pembrokeshire, as a home, a studio and a gallery space. There he lived with his second wife, artist Beryl (Bim), née Butler. Given Giardelli’s Christian pacifism it seems ironic that nowadays Estate Agents highlight The Golden Plover’s spectacular view over a Ministry of Defence Training area. This talented man, cosmopolitan in outlook, devoted to communicating art and promoting modern artistry in Wales, had found his feet and confidence as an artist in our Merthyr Tydfil County Borough.
See many examples of his work on the Mutual Art website (free to log into).
https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Arthur-Giardelli/9EE7775ED81C701B/Artworks
Read Arthur Giardelli obituaries in the Guardian and Independent newspapers
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/11/arthur-giardelli-obituary
