Colin William MOSS, A.R.C.A. (1914 - 2005)

Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and teacher, Colin Moss was born in Ipswich in 1914. He studied at the Plymouth Art School, 1930-1934. He won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, studying under Gilbert Spencer, Charles Mahoney and Percy Horton, 1934-1938. Among his contemporaries was Mervyn Levy, who became a life-long friend. In the same year, he completed mural paintings for the British pavilion at the New York World Fair.

During the war, he was a camouflage designer to the Ministry of Home Security, a position he was to hold until active war service took him to the Middle East, where he stayed until 1946. After he was demobbed, he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Ipswich School of Art and held that position until his retirement in 1979.

In 1961, he studied under Kokoschka in Salzburg and, like his teacher, he was an expressionist, using strong rich colours and tones, and forceful brushstrokes. In 1976, Moss was a founder member of 'Six in Suffolk Group'. He was elected chairman of Ipswich Art Club in 1980 and later beame its president. He took part in many mixed shows, including 'Britain in Watercolour' at the RWS in 1953, solo exhibitions at Kensington Gallery in 1951, the Zwemmer Gallery in 1955 and many shows in East Anglia.

Source: Buckman: Dictionary of Artists in Britain since 1945

His works are in the collections of the British Museum, The Tate Gallery Archive, The Imperial War Museum, The Government Art Collection, Ipswich Borough Council Museums & Galleries, Leamington Spa Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham Art Gallery, and the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society

Publication

"Colin Moss Life Observed" by Chloe Bennett. Fully illustrated, published by Malthouse Press, Suffolk 1996. For more information, see The Book page

Recent Exhibition

COLIN MOSS: A Celebration of the Artist’s Life and Work
Chappel Galleries, Colchester Road, Chappel, Essex. CO6 2DE.
31 March to 22 April 2007.
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Works in public collections

British Museum, London
Tate Gallery Archive, London
Imperial War Museum, London
Government Art Collection, London
Ipswich Borough Council Museums & Galleries
Leamington Spa Museum & Art Gallery
Nottingham Art Gallery
Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society
Norwich Castle Museum

Camouflage Painting

"Camouflage is no mystery and no joke. It is a matter of life and death - of victory or defeat." Roland Penrose

Colin Moss was one of over a hundred and fifty artists employed with the air ministry in the camouflage directorate based in the Midlands. During its main period of operation, the unit camouflaged factories, dockyards, ships, power stations, some airports and town plus key targets such as wireless stations. Colin worked with the unit from 1939 to 1941 alongside artists such as Leon Underwood, Richard Carline and Edwin LaDell and the stage designer Paul Shelving. Their acute visual awareness, creativity and technical skills made them ideally suited for this work.

In 1943 the Ministry of Home Security gave all its artists (including Colin who was by then a serving member of the Life Guards - part of the Household Cavalry) a month's paid leave to produce paintings of the camouflage jobs they had worked on. The artists were paid £2 for each painting they produced. Colin later made a submission to the War Artists Advisory Committee of some of these works which are now in the Imperial War Museum.

Extract from "Colin Moss: Life Observed" (Chloe Bennett, Malthouse Press)

"We worked in regions, I was in the London region, and it was all power stations and factories (we only did civilian camouflage)," Colin recalls. "We used to fly over the building and write a lot of notes about the surroundings and take photographs, and then we went back to the studio and they used to have scale models made".
[The scale they used was one sixteenth of an inch to a foot.]

"You worked on a scale model and painted it in a certain range of colours, which was used on all camouflage work. There was a turntable which you put it on and a moving light, which represented the sun, and you got up on a platform, which was about the height that a bombing pilot would come in at, and turned this thing around to see how it reacted to different times of day."
[They assumed that the bombers would be flying at 1500 feet as this was the optimum bombing height.]

Some of Colin's war time work is currently on show as part of the Camouflage exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.

Obituaries

Colin Moss: Leading East Anglian artist and teacher, a pupil of Kokoschka with an anti-Bohemian bearing.
Ian Collins in The Guardian, Saturday January 14, 2006. See Collins's article

Colin Moss: Uncompromising painter
David Buckman in The Independent, Saturday 31 December 2005. See Buckman's article

Colin William Moss

1914 Born Ipswich
1934-38 Royal College of Art, London
1947-79 Senior Lecturer, Ipswich School of Art
1961 Studied under Kokoschka in Salzburg
1981-95 Art Critic to East Anglian Daily Times
Died aged 91

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1951 Kensington Art Gallery, London
1955 Zwemmer Gallery, London
1956 Prospect Gallery, London
1979 Digby Gallery, Mercury Theatre, Colchester
1981 Retrospective Exhibition, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
1983 Retrospective Exhibition,
The Minories, Colchester
1985 Phoenix Gallery, Lavenham
1987 Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery
1988 John Russell Gallery, Ipswich
1990 Paintings Religious & Profane, Chappel Galleries, Essex (featured on BBC TV)
1991 Sweetwaters Gallery, London
1992 John Russell Gallery, Ipswich Works on Paper from 1946,
Chappel Galleries, Essex
1994 John Russell Gallery, Ipswich "Colin Moss's People" Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
1996 John Russell Gallery, Ipswich
1998 "Have I Got Nudes for You", Chappel Galleries, Essex
2001 "Watercolour Retrospective" Artists' Gallery, Ipswich
2004 "Camouflage" Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
2007 Memorial Exhibition, Chappel Galleries, Essex
2007 Halesworth Gallery Retrospective Exhibition
2008 The Assembly House, Norwich
2010 "1914–2005: Artist & Teacher" Ipswich Town Hall Galleries

MIXED EXHIBITIONS

1953 "Britain in Watercolour" RWS Gallery, London
1954 "Artists Under Forty", Zwemmer Gallery, London
1955 Royal Academy, London
1956 South London Art Gallery
1962 Royal Academy, London
1983 AIA Exhibition, Camden Art Gallery, London
1989 Paintings of Camouflage, Imperial War Museum, London
"Portrait of the Artist" Tate Gallery, London
"Signed Essex" The Minories, Colchester
"Flower in Art" Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
1991 Art '91 Business Centre, Islington, London
Influential East Anglian Artists, Chappel Galleries, Essex
Lang Competition, Mall Galleries, London
"Spectrum" Sweetwaters Gallery, London
20C British Art, Royal College of Art, London
1995 Ipswich Open, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
Art '95 Business Centre, Islington, London
Aldeburgh 100 20C British Drawings and Prints,
Simon Carter Gallery, Woodbridge, Suffolk
Government Art Collection, London
1996 "Flowers in May", King of Hearts Gallery, Norwich
1997 25th Anniversary, Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery
2006 "Colin Moss & Colleagues", Ethna Dillon Gallery, Norwich
2008 Camouflage, Imperial War Museum