Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘Alex’s almost childlike sense of Wonder is reflected in his work’
A special exhibition in Taunton has been wowing crowds, showing an era of great change and optimism in rural Somerset
AREMARKABLE exhibition has been proving highly popular at the Museum of Somerset in recent weeks – and part of the reason for its success is that the renowned artist whose work is featured spent the greater part of his life being inspired by the rural corner of the West Country where he lived and worked.
Alexander Hollweg (1936–2020) lived for many years on the Nettlecombe estate in West Somerset, a secluded valley which has been home to a creative community of artists, musicians and writers for the past 50 years.
The scenic valley in the Brendon Hills inspired his most famous work Country Dance, which depicts a bucolic and joyful scene of people rediscovering nature.
The WDP journalist and columnist Martin Hesp is one of the many people featured in the painting, and he recalls: “For me Country Dance acts as a kind of icon which so eloquently describes a very special time. Special in my own life, and I believe special in the annals of West Country history too.
“My friend Alex Hollweg painted the work at Nettlecombe in the 1970s, at a particular moment which marked a divide between two distinct social eras. The long arm of Victorian Britain, which had been so altered and re-imagined by two terrible world wars, was finally coming to a close in the more rural parts of England where it had remained stolid for so long.
“I was witnessing the last vestiges of what could be described as a buttoned-up and somewhat repressive world as a young newspaper reporter working in West Somerset at the time.
“The 1960s had introduced a sense of freedom – hippies and flowerpower had been around for years in far-off places like San Francisco or parts of London – but that freedom was only just beginning to be felt in the more rural parts of this region. At the same time the absolute casting aside of the old ways – which were later to be seen during the more aggressive eras of Punk Rock and its antithesis led by Margaret Thatcher – were not yet a twinkle in anyone’s eye.
“We didn’t know it, but in places like West Somerset during the mid1970s, we were fortunate to be living through a kind of golden time. Today’s boundless materialism – this new era in which church on Sunday has been ousted by the out-of-town shopping mall – would have been been regarded as unthinkable back then. Our modern time, in which half the population is clouded by self-doubt, and political correctness is at constant odds with reactionary populism, would have been regarded as a futuristic nightmare.
“What we enjoyed – and what is absolutely captured by Alex Hollweg’s Country Dance – were a few years of boundless fun. Fun, because a young reporter like me no longer needed to wear a collar and tie to walk down the street. Fun, because we thought two world wars had shown humankind how mad such conflicts were and new technologies were allowing ordinary people to own cars, fly in aeroplanes, and do all manner of things which had previously been the private reserve of the very rich.
“It seemed to me at the time that Alex Hollweg captured all this optimism in his many forms of artwork – the paintings, the three-dimension wall-hangings, and so on. And it still seems that way to me now, half-acentury later, when I visit the retrospective exhibition of Alex’s work at the Museum of Somerset.
“Alex Hollweg, who was one of the brightest and most intellectual friends I’ve ever had, was able to go about the world armed with an almost childlike sense of wonder.
“The cheerful nature of his observations – not only of the joy of living in a rural idyll like Nettlecombe – was to be seen in his approach to
Alexander Hollweg created art that translates the ordinary and everyday into surprising, often humorous, reflections on modern life. In this quiet corner of West Somerset he and his wife, Geraldine, forged a life centred around family, community, music and art SARAH COX
subjects like the grey terraced, almost Cubist, streets of nearby Watchet. Or even in the way he occasionally depicted the town’s brass band. When he donned their uniform (he played for the brass band for many years) it was almost as if he were a small boy enjoying some kind of role play in a toy town of his own imagining.
“This almost innocent, clean, nonpolluted sense of optimism is, I believe, hugely present in his work and I believe that is why visitors are enjoying this remarkable exhibition so much,” says Martin.
The exhibition, Journeys in Art, which runs until March 9, is the largest show of Hollweg’s art ever staged and features paintings and sculpture from across six decades of his career, including some of the 40 painted wooden sculptures that were exhibited at his first major exhibition, held at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 1971. It was this show which led to his work being exhibited internationally, including in Italy and New York.
Sarah Cox, exhibition curator, said: “Alexander Hollweg created art that translates the ordinary and everyday into surprising, often humorous, reflections on modern life. In this quiet corner of West Somerset he and his wife, Geraldine, forged a life centred around family, community, music and art.”
His best-known work, the woodcut Country Dance which appears in the exhibition, is now part of the collections of the Tate.
The museum is also working with the East Quay arts centre at Watchet, which is hosting an associated exhibition of new and existing work by Sam Francis. Using Country Dance as a starting point, Francis is taking a deeper look at the creative culture and mythologies of the Nettlecombe estate and surrounding area.
Admission to the Museum of Somerset and exhibition is free, with donations welcome.