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A Brief Chronology

Public Collections

Tate Britain

Private Collections

Memberships

Ronda, Spain, 2004

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

Cliff Holden FCSD (Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers)

1919	Born - Manchester
1944	Met David Bomberg
1946	Founding President of the Borough Group
1946-1951	Seven exhibitions of the Borough Group
1951	Exhibition at Parsons Gallery - work by Holden, Creffield, Mead, and Richmond
1952	Exhibition at Gummesons Gallery, Stockholm - work by Holden, Creffield, Mead and Richmond (at the invitation of Torsten Renquist)
1953	Lived and worked in Spain with Dorothy Mead
1955	Exhibitions at Manchester Library - silk screen prints and paintings (also in 1959)
1956	Exhibitions in Stockholm and Gothenburg
	Met Lisa Grönwall and Maj Nilsson and conceived the idea of a design studio
	Guest teacher at Valand School of Art, Gothenburg
1962	Design of the Year - awarded by the Design Centre (presented by Prince Philip)
	Marstrand Designers' murals and wallpaper designs can be found throughout the world (in hotels, offices, embassies, ships, hospitals etc.)
1973	Guest teacher at Mount Mary College, Milwaukee and Goldsmiths College, University of London
1996	Hässlås Målarskola received Northampton Journal Award for quality and service
1999	Composed manuscript "Work in Progress" (deposited with the Tate Archive)
2000	Exhibition in Falkenberg, Sweden - Celebration of Holden's 80th birthday
	Special foyer display of one work at Tate Britain in honour of Holden's 80th birthday
2004	Bomberg and the Borough - exhibition at Tate Britain
	Special display of one work at Tate Britain in honour of Holden's 85th birthday
	Bomberg and Pupils, The Borough Group 1946-1951 - exhibition at the Boundary Gallery, London
	Included in exhibition at Modern British Artists, London
	Launch of web site (http://www.cliffholden.co.uk)
2005	Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century - inaugural exhibition at the Northumbria University Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. To read about Cliff's self-portrait which is in the exhibition see Chapter from 'Face to Face...' (Cliff Holden).
2006	Awarded degree of Honorary Doctor of Letters by London South Bank University
2020	Died - Sweden

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Work by Cliff Holden is held in the following public collections:-

Arts Council of Great Britain

Victoria & Albert Museum Textile Archives

Whitworth Gallery, Manchester - houses many examples of wallpaper designs

MMU, Manchester College of Art (Graphic Section)

Tate Britain, London

Museum of Modern Art, Edinburgh (Graphic Section)

Manchester City Art Gallery (Rutherston Collection)

Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm

National Museum, Stockholm (Graphic Section)

Laholm's Museum of Drawings

Museums of Gothenburg, Luleå, Eskilstuna, Borås and Karlstad

TATE BRITAIN

Information and caption text below courtesy of Tate Online.

Title:	Yellow Seated Figure
Medium:	Oil on board
Dimensions:	730mm x 572mm
Purchased:	1962
Tate Work Number:	T00504
Tate Online Web Page:	Yellow Seated Figure

From the exhibition display caption July 2004:

This work was exhibited at the third Borough Group exhibition, in 1949. The subject matter, the muted, earthy colours, vigorous paint work and strong sense of structure are all typical of the group. Holden said that ‘What a painter has to do is not to recognise either the object or the image but to recognise the kind of sensation that has produced the image’.

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

U.S.A., Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland & U.K.

MEMBERSHIPS

Cliff was a member of the following organisations:-

The London Group

Fellow of the Free Painters and Sculptors

Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers

Design Associate, American Institute of Interior Designers

Artists Club, Gothenburg

KRO – The Swedish National Union of Artists

The Swedish National Handicraft and Industrial Design Organization

RONDA, SPAIN, 2004

Cliff drawing on the Virgen de la Cabeza, Ronda, Spain, 3rd October 2004:-

Cliff drawing on the Virgen de la Cabeza, Ronda, Spain, 3rd October 2004:-

[Page last updated: 22nd January 2021]

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