Watch: Video Tour of St Martin’s including the stunning Evelyn Gibbs murals
The work of a Nottingham artist behind a stunning ‘hidden mural’ is being celebrated in a new exhibition.
Evelyn Gibbs was famous for her striking paintings and drawings of life in wartime Britain.
Her work was thrust in to the limelight again in 2009 when staff at St Martin’s Church in Bilborough discovered a mural of the Annunciation behind old panels in the chancel.
The two figures have since been uncovered and restored and the story of their rediscovery will be recreated in an exhibition of her work at Nottingham Castle in July.
‘Evelyn Gibbs – In Peace and Wartime’ will run at the castle’s art gallery from July 9 – to October 9 and focus on the work she did while in her twenties during the Second World War.
Gibbs, who died in 1991 was a printmaker, painter and educationalist, who was evacuated from London to Nottingham with her students from Goldsmiths College at the outbreak of the Second World War.
She was known for delicate etchings and engravings of figures in timeless settings. But in the 1940s, as she was selected as one of the women ‘War Artists’ charged with recording women’s work on the ‘Homefront’.
Her work became more energetic, with harsher lines of pen and charcoal and a famous series of drawings made at Nottingham’s Raleigh bicycle factory, which at the time was temporarily appropriated by the Ministry of Defence for the manufacture of munitions.
The Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery will be presenting the work of Evelyn Gibbs made in her 20s and during World War II.
The exhibition will cover work from her early years at the Royal College of London, then moves over to her work she made in Nottingham after she was evacuated.
It will also cover the interesting story of the murals she had painted for St Martin’s Church in Bilborough and their recent rescue and restoration.
