0:00:03 > 0:00:06Welsh art of the 20th century is the story of how artists grappled with their tumultuous times,
0:00:06 > 0:00:15producing work that sometimes reflected and sometimes challenged the Wales they'd emerged from.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19Once upon a time, I wanted to be one of those artists.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23And after school here in Aberdare, I went to Hornsey College of Art
0:00:23 > 0:00:28in London and straight into the art college revolt of 1968.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35All in agreement? I propose that we now march down to Wood Green Civic Centre...
0:00:35 > 0:00:38Later, as Minister for the Arts, I hit the headlines
0:00:38 > 0:00:44when I criticised what I saw as the emptiness of some modern art.
0:00:44 > 0:00:49Now I've retired from politics and taken up painting again.
0:00:49 > 0:00:55In this series, I'm going to look at the story of art in Wales during the 20th century, meet some
0:00:55 > 0:00:59amazing artists, and discover some unforgettable works of art.
0:01:10 > 0:01:13In the years after the Second World War, there was a momentum to Welsh art.
0:01:13 > 0:01:17But there was no single style or school of painting.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21Instead, a number of talented individualists
0:01:21 > 0:01:28created their own pictures of Wales and in the process, made some lasting images of Welsh life.
0:01:43 > 0:01:46The Second World War caused a massive movement of people
0:01:46 > 0:01:51around Europe, and Welsh art benefited from an influx of refugees.
0:01:51 > 0:01:59Two artists who had escaped from fascism and made their home in Wales where Heinz Koppel and Josef Herman.
0:01:59 > 0:02:06Both Jewish, they had fled the Nazis and made their way eventually to the valleys of South Wales.
0:02:06 > 0:02:10The place had a profound impact upon their work,
0:02:10 > 0:02:15and in turn, their work had a dramatic effect upon Welsh art.
0:02:20 > 0:02:22WHISTLE BLOWS
0:02:29 > 0:02:32Josef Herman was a Polish artist whose flight from the Nazis
0:02:32 > 0:02:39took him first to Glasgow, and finally to Ystradgynlais, where he settled in 1944.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42The town was at the height of the anthracite coalfield,
0:02:42 > 0:02:47and Herman was inspired by the sight of miners working.
0:02:47 > 0:02:51He returned to the subject again and again during a long career which
0:02:51 > 0:02:54ended with his death in the year 2000.
0:03:00 > 0:03:07For Herman, the miner became a symbolic form, and his paintings of them became famous.
0:03:07 > 0:03:16These large panels, now in the Glynn Vivian in Swansea, were commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36Josef Herman was celebrated in his own lifetime.
0:03:36 > 0:03:42But another emigre artist was less well-known, but equally influential.
0:03:42 > 0:03:48The German, Heinz Koppel, settled here in Dowlais, near Merthyr, in 1944.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53Part of an artistic community, he taught local people and young artists.
0:03:53 > 0:03:58His widow, Pip, remembers those tough early years.
0:03:58 > 0:04:02He was eccentric, you'd call it now.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07We didn't use words like that then.
0:04:07 > 0:04:12But he was a very approachable person.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16Not a jolly person, he was serious.
0:04:16 > 0:04:21If somebody wanted to work, he took them seriously.
0:04:21 > 0:04:23And he was interested to see
0:04:23 > 0:04:29what people who came to paint chose to paint, to do.
0:04:29 > 0:04:33He painted them, and they painted
0:04:33 > 0:04:35what they found and saw.
0:04:39 > 0:04:47Lots of young artists came to see him, because of course Heinz was an established painter.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49Were they in awe of Heinz?
0:04:49 > 0:04:51How did he greet them?
0:04:51 > 0:04:56They never expressed awe, there was a very
0:04:56 > 0:05:04good relationship, but very clearly an appreciation of each other.
0:05:04 > 0:05:06Rather than
0:05:06 > 0:05:09him up there and they down there.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14Heinz Koppel's effect on young artists in Wales
0:05:14 > 0:05:21wouldn't be seen for another decade, but at the time, the Welsh arts establishment found him difficult.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24Was he too much of a modernist for them?
0:05:24 > 0:05:29No, I think the European element confused them,
0:05:29 > 0:05:37which came out and was too strange, too strong, at that time.
0:05:49 > 0:05:53If Heinz Koppel was too European for some in Wales, Ceri Richards,
0:05:53 > 0:05:57the best-known Welsh artist of the mid-20th century,
0:05:57 > 0:05:58had no such problems.
0:06:06 > 0:06:11In the 1930s, Ceri Richards embraced the new European art.
0:06:11 > 0:06:16And after the Second World War, he became one of the most successful British artists.
0:06:16 > 0:06:23Inspired by Matisse and Picasso, he produced dreamlike, Surrealist paintings.
0:06:26 > 0:06:31Richards's paintings of this period are complex, multi-layered works.
0:06:31 > 0:06:36The Cycle of Nature, from 1944, reflected his idea that even in war,
0:06:36 > 0:06:40nature will take over and a rebirth will begin again.
0:06:44 > 0:06:49Ceri Richards's daughter, Rhiannon, explained to me how her father worked.
0:06:49 > 0:06:51This is one of your father's sketchbooks.
0:06:51 > 0:06:53When would this be from, roughly?
0:06:53 > 0:06:58Well, he's actually taken the trouble to date it. New Year's Day, 1949.
0:06:58 > 0:07:03It's very interesting, although it's quite a rough black and white sketch.
0:07:03 > 0:07:06We can see the individual colours here.
0:07:06 > 0:07:10- Yes.- And they are directions for a painting. - That's right, they're directions.
0:07:10 > 0:07:14Every little piece has got its own colour.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17This says dark pink, I think.
0:07:17 > 0:07:22This was a very detailed plan for a future painting.
0:07:24 > 0:07:26And there are lots of drawings in here.
0:07:26 > 0:07:29In this one, a third of the picture is a piano.
0:07:29 > 0:07:34- Yes.- What was it about pianos and pianists and music and so on?
0:07:34 > 0:07:36Well, he was trained
0:07:36 > 0:07:40to play the piano from an early age, as were all the family.
0:07:40 > 0:07:47And he remained a very, very good pianist and as soon as he could afford it, he bought a piano
0:07:47 > 0:07:51and had pianos all his life, and played every day.
0:07:51 > 0:07:53And played very, very well.
0:07:53 > 0:07:57This features in different ways in such a lot of his work.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16This picture, I love particularly, because of those fingers!
0:08:16 > 0:08:18- They're great fingers, aren't they? - Yes, yes.
0:08:18 > 0:08:23- But they're so different from the drawings he did of you, for example. - Yes, absolutely.
0:08:23 > 0:08:30He employed a different method, or a different approach, if you like, when he was doing pictures of the family.
0:08:30 > 0:08:35He did beautiful ones of me when I was a baby and a young child, and of
0:08:35 > 0:08:39his sister, and of my sister, and of his wife as well.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57Someone else who remembers Ceri Richards is the artist Joan Baker.
0:08:57 > 0:09:03Now 88, she was one of his students at Cardiff School of Art during the Second World War.
0:09:03 > 0:09:09For wartime students like Joan, seeing the latest modern art was almost impossible.
0:09:09 > 0:09:16But Ceri Richards owned a surrealist masterpiece by the German artist, Max Ernst.
0:09:16 > 0:09:23So, Ceri Richards brought into the Cardiff School of Art a real painting by Max Ernst, original?
0:09:23 > 0:09:26- Yes, a real Max Ernst. - And he brought it in for you to see?
0:09:26 > 0:09:30Oh, he brought it in for the students to see.
0:09:30 > 0:09:35You know, just to look down and see this, and there it was.
0:09:35 > 0:09:36It was fascinating.
0:09:36 > 0:09:42And the wonderful feeling of seeing the living thing, because wartime
0:09:42 > 0:09:46was very restricted as to what you could see. We were lucky.
0:09:46 > 0:09:50It was just so thrilling and exciting.
0:09:50 > 0:09:53I don't know why people ever bother
0:09:53 > 0:09:59with drink or take drugs or anything, the sheer excitement of art...
0:09:59 > 0:10:01is so wonderful in itself.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08Joan Baker later became a lecturer at Cardiff School of Art,
0:10:08 > 0:10:11and has spent the last 60 years painting the South Wales landscape.
0:10:20 > 0:10:26Just as Joan Baker had been taught by Ceri Richards, now it was her turn to pass on ideas about art.
0:10:26 > 0:10:32And after the war, a new generation of Cardiff art students were heading down the tracks.
0:10:42 > 0:10:46The late 1940s were a time of optimism in South Wales.
0:10:46 > 0:10:51The mines had just been nationalised, Nye Bevan's health service was up and running,
0:10:51 > 0:10:58and increasing numbers of people were going to further education, including to art college.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02Among them where a group of young men who travelled by train every day
0:11:02 > 0:11:06from the Rhondda Valley to the Cardiff School of Art.
0:11:06 > 0:11:12Their carriage became a legendary mobile art class.
0:11:15 > 0:11:18These young art students called themselves the Rhondda Group, and
0:11:18 > 0:11:25included artists like Ernie Zobole, Robert Thomas and Charlie Burton.
0:11:25 > 0:11:27Charlie Burton is one of the last survivors of the group.
0:11:27 > 0:11:32Now in his early 80s, he's still painting.
0:11:32 > 0:11:37We were a little group and we spoke continually
0:11:37 > 0:11:39about the arts.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42It was quite a long journey from Treherbert to Cardiff, by train.
0:11:42 > 0:11:45It seemed very short, it seemed very short.
0:11:45 > 0:11:47Because the discussion was so intense.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50You know the way time plays tricks.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57Nobody was allowed to get into our compartment.
0:11:59 > 0:12:05We spoke about painting all the way down in the train, and looked at one another's drawings.
0:12:05 > 0:12:08- You were obsessed by the subject? - Yes, yes, we were.
0:12:12 > 0:12:20There were big arguments of who was the better painter, Matisse or Picasso. Bonnard was still alive.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23We were just living the business.
0:12:30 > 0:12:35The Rhondda Group I think, with hindsight now, we realise more and more how exceptional they were.
0:12:35 > 0:12:38And they emerged in the immediate post-war period.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41And here we have a kind of major transition point.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44During the Second World War, you actually had Ceri Richards
0:12:44 > 0:12:48teaching in Cardiff College of Art, alongside Evan Charlton.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53And the exceptional art being produced then was by the teachers.
0:12:53 > 0:12:58But come 1945 and thereafter, it switches now to a new generation,
0:12:58 > 0:13:01and these are not the teachers, these are the students.
0:13:01 > 0:13:05They were Rhondda rooted, and yet their vision was European.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17We were terribly interested in everything that was happening in the world.
0:13:17 > 0:13:22We knew that we weren't Cezanne or Van Gogh, living in the south of France.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25You know, we lived
0:13:25 > 0:13:30in the Rhondda, and there was a feeling after the war
0:13:30 > 0:13:36that one could really do something oneself, exactly where one was.
0:13:45 > 0:13:47TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
0:13:52 > 0:13:58Perhaps the best known artist of the Rhondda Group was Ernest Zobole.
0:13:58 > 0:14:03The son of Italian immigrants, he was inspired by Heinz Koppel
0:14:03 > 0:14:10to create dreamlike paintings of his home town, a kind of Welsh magic realism.
0:14:11 > 0:14:17The University of Glamorgan in Pontypridd has a fine collection of Ernest Zobole's work.
0:14:17 > 0:14:21Art historian, Ceri Thomas, whose father Robert was also a key
0:14:21 > 0:14:26member of the Rhondda Group, is an expert on Zobole.
0:14:26 > 0:14:28Ernie Zobole,
0:14:28 > 0:14:33very early on, even when he was still an art student, was painting
0:14:33 > 0:14:39in colours which looked like very, very avant-garde European painters.
0:14:39 > 0:14:42Where would he have seen this kind of work?
0:14:42 > 0:14:46Very early on, they were travelling to London and looking at the latest exhibitions.
0:14:46 > 0:14:51So Van Gogh, you know, the explosion of colour that was Van Gogh, was known to Zobole.
0:14:51 > 0:14:54But closer to home, I think it really was Ceri Richards.
0:14:54 > 0:15:00In these pictures, in the early Fifties, he's limiting his palette to a blue.
0:15:00 > 0:15:06And Richards had experimented with that same kind of palette, himself looking back at people like Matisse,
0:15:06 > 0:15:08in a series of paintings of Trafalgar Square.
0:15:08 > 0:15:12So we have Zobole then looking at the squares and the streets
0:15:12 > 0:15:13in the Rhondda,
0:15:13 > 0:15:17and introducing this blue, as you say, avant-garde palette.
0:15:22 > 0:15:27As his career progressed, Ernest Zobole's paintings became more stylised,
0:15:27 > 0:15:31transforming the Rhondda into an abstract and simplified universe.
0:15:39 > 0:15:43In the final years before his death in 1999, Ernest Zobole
0:15:43 > 0:15:51created a unique image of his native valley, often seen at night, and full of jewel-like colours.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59When I have spoken about getting different angles, different shots, different viewpoints
0:15:59 > 0:16:04into the same picture, getting in more than one could see,
0:16:04 > 0:16:07as it were, from one viewpoint.
0:16:07 > 0:16:11This night-time thing helps in doing that, because looking round
0:16:11 > 0:16:22now, you can see objects illuminated, and they crop up at different levels of a black curtain, as it were.
0:16:22 > 0:16:29Ceri, this is the mid-1990s, and this is one of Ernie Zobole's last paintings.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33It's about a man who knows he hasn't got much longer to live.
0:16:33 > 0:16:36It's a very beautiful painting.
0:16:36 > 0:16:38The right hand side of the painting is more abstract.
0:16:38 > 0:16:41But certainly, the left-hand side, you know, the figure returns and he
0:16:41 > 0:16:45actually is painting himself here, in this curious rectangle.
0:16:45 > 0:16:49Some people see the rectangle not as a mirror, not as a doorway, but as a coffin.
0:16:49 > 0:16:54So, I think there is that kind of resonance.
0:16:54 > 0:16:59Certainly in his mind's eye, he is moving away into another place.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02And the whole kind of Rhondda is almost becoming an encapsulated bubble.
0:17:02 > 0:17:08And we have this 360 degrees of sky round the edge.
0:17:08 > 0:17:10This is almost Planet Rhondda.
0:17:15 > 0:17:20In the 1950s, radical ideas in modern art had their advocates in Wales.
0:17:20 > 0:17:26The 56 Group, founded in 1956, were excited by the latest abstract art,
0:17:26 > 0:17:30and their exhibitions often stirred up controversy.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34Their most famous member was Arthur Giardelli, who created fantastic
0:17:34 > 0:17:39collages, inspired by the sea shore near his Pembrokeshire home.
0:17:43 > 0:17:45But if his subject matter was Welsh,
0:17:45 > 0:17:50he took inspiration from the new European art.
0:17:50 > 0:17:54It was not dissatisfaction with representational art, showing
0:17:54 > 0:18:00trees and cows in my pictures, that led me eventually to picking bits of wood out of a heap of old wreckage.
0:18:00 > 0:18:06I went to Holland, lecturing on British painting, and had the chance to see a lot of work of painters
0:18:06 > 0:18:13like Mondrian, a great innovator in abstract painting, using such simple forms as squares and rectangles.
0:18:17 > 0:18:19But others retained a more traditional perspective.
0:18:19 > 0:18:24Will Roberts, who'd studied with Josef Herman, painted the
0:18:24 > 0:18:28dignity of people working on the land around his home in Neath.
0:18:36 > 0:18:41There's no single style to Welsh art in the 1940s and 1950s.
0:18:41 > 0:18:46Right across Wales, artists were painting their own people and places, in their own way.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50John Elwyn was born in Cardiganshire.
0:18:50 > 0:18:52For much of his life, he taught in England.
0:18:52 > 0:18:59But he still managed to create an evocative sense of the Wales that he grew up in.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18Someone who knew John Elwyn is the head of Aberystwyth's School of Art, Robert Meyrick.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22He showed me his private collection of Elwyn's paintings.
0:19:24 > 0:19:30John Elwyn produced landscapes that seemed to me to be
0:19:30 > 0:19:36as lovely and as accurate an image of Wales as is possible to imagine.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39But he painted these living away from Wales?
0:19:39 > 0:19:46Yes. All his paintings are based upon his recollections of Wales, sketchbook drawings.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49I would often visit him at weekends down in Winchester,
0:19:49 > 0:19:53leave here on the most miserable wet November evenings,
0:19:53 > 0:19:54arrive about 9 o'clock,
0:19:54 > 0:19:58and be surrounded by these paintings in his studio.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01And I'd say, that's not the Wales that I know, you should have seen it when I left.
0:20:01 > 0:20:08He said, oh, there's enough misery and greyness in this world without me adding to it!
0:20:08 > 0:20:13This is a fascinating painting - the top half contains,
0:20:13 > 0:20:18if you like, all of the iconography that we're interested in in Wales.
0:20:18 > 0:20:24You've got a school, a chapel, you've got these little houses clustered together.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28The whole of the bottom half is this extraordinary field. Did he ever talk about this painting to you?
0:20:28 > 0:20:33Yes. He would often paint and see what suggested itself.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37And it was about this lovely sort of contrast between all these subtle
0:20:37 > 0:20:43greys and pinks and pale yellows, and this very vibrant orange and yellow.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46Now here, we've got two church deacons, or something.
0:20:46 > 0:20:52I find this a more idealised picture of an imagined Wales
0:20:52 > 0:20:55than the paintings of the farms and the hillsides.
0:20:55 > 0:20:59Well, it is, because actually, he's painting Wales here of the 1920s when he was a child.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02And I think it's done with great sincerity.
0:21:02 > 0:21:06But it's the attention to detail, you know, whether you had a red strip
0:21:06 > 0:21:10on the top of the binding of your Bible, or whether you had a gold one.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22I think John Elwyn's paintings are instantly identifiable for the way in which he applies paint.
0:21:22 > 0:21:28He's a very painterly painter, despite their representation.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31You know, they're not entirely about the process of mark-making.
0:21:31 > 0:21:34But also adventurous in his use of colour.
0:21:47 > 0:21:53Artists often explore with great intensity their creative relationship with their environment.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56The last two artists in this programme both did that.
0:21:56 > 0:22:02Kyffin Williams in the mountains of Snowdonia, and Brenda Chamberlain on the island of Bardsey.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08Brenda Chamberlain was a poet as well as a painter and printmaker.
0:22:08 > 0:22:12A rare woman artist of this period, in the late 1940s,
0:22:12 > 0:22:16she moved to Bardsey Island on the tip of the Llyn Peninsula.
0:22:16 > 0:22:23It's not easy to reach now, but in those days, it was about as remote as you could get in Wales.
0:22:26 > 0:22:30Full of years and seasoned like a salt timber,
0:22:30 > 0:22:35the island fisherman has come to terms with death.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38His crabbed fingers are afire with phosphorus.
0:22:38 > 0:22:44From the night sea he fishes for bright armoured herring.
0:22:44 > 0:22:50The National Library in Aberystwyth holds a large collection of Brenda Chamberlain's work.
0:22:50 > 0:22:53I went there to meet Chamberlain expert, Jill Piercy.
0:22:53 > 0:22:58Jill, what year did Brenda move to Bardsey?
0:22:58 > 0:23:05Well, after a day trip in, I think it was 45, she moved in 1946.
0:23:05 > 0:23:08And stayed there until 1962.
0:23:08 > 0:23:10She lived very frugally,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13but quite often she was very low on food.
0:23:13 > 0:23:17If she ran out of canvases, she'd paint on newspaper.
0:23:17 > 0:23:23And there's one painting I saw which was the hardboard on the side of the sink, that she painted on.
0:23:23 > 0:23:26Nothing else to paint on, she had to paint.
0:23:28 > 0:23:31These are some of the drawings that she did in Bardsey?
0:23:31 > 0:23:37Yes. Yes. And in fact, these were used in her book, Tide Race.
0:23:37 > 0:23:43And she's drawing shells and fish, the people, presumably, who were on the island?
0:23:43 > 0:23:46Yes, that'll be one of the children on the island.
0:23:46 > 0:23:50The shape of the faces that she tended to draw were all very
0:23:50 > 0:23:54similar, very elongated, with these almond eyes.
0:23:54 > 0:24:01There were very few artists, male or female, who were able to survive just by their work.
0:24:01 > 0:24:09And particularly, there were very few female contemporaries at that time, and very few galleries.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12So you really had to fight to get your work out there.
0:24:16 > 0:24:20Brenda Chamberlain was always a restless figure, who lived on
0:24:20 > 0:24:25a Greek island before coming back to North Wales, where she died in 1971.
0:24:25 > 0:24:32But for some artists, they discover their ideal landscape, and spend their lives exploring it.
0:24:32 > 0:24:40One of those was Kyffin Williams, and the place that inspired him was the uplands of North Wales.
0:24:45 > 0:24:49Permanence of the mountains, the weight of the mountains,
0:24:49 > 0:24:52the light of the mountains and the shapes of the mountains.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54As this light,
0:24:54 > 0:25:01light the other side of the ridges, the darkness of the hill against the bright sky and the bustling clouds.
0:25:01 > 0:25:04And the lines of the walls and the lines of the ridges.
0:25:04 > 0:25:07This is always excitement.
0:25:07 > 0:25:13I suppose one of the reasons why I paint is for excitement.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17Kyffin Williams was born on Anglesey in 1918.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22A doctor suggested he took up painting as a therapy for his epilepsy.
0:25:23 > 0:25:30He spent the next 60 years painting this landscape and the people who live and work in it.
0:25:30 > 0:25:35He became the most famous Welsh artist of his generation.
0:25:37 > 0:25:41At the gallery on Anglesey, dedicated to the artist's work,
0:25:41 > 0:25:45John Smith, who knew Kyffin, described his working methods.
0:25:45 > 0:25:48This was one of his favourite locations.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52This is where he chose to do this pencil drawing,
0:25:52 > 0:25:56with some watercolour in it, as a preparation for a larger painting.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00It is. You can see it's been done very quickly, in a very bold manner.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03It probably took a few minutes, and then he would take it back to
0:26:03 > 0:26:09the studio, or even to the car, and block some of the colours in, these subtle colours.
0:26:09 > 0:26:12The dark tones. Just to give it body and form.
0:26:12 > 0:26:14It's a rock-solid technique, though, isn't it?
0:26:14 > 0:26:18You can see straight away, this is the imprint of a great draughtsman.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21Well, his background was in draughtsmanship, you know,
0:26:21 > 0:26:25the companies he worked for, land agents and estate agents.
0:26:25 > 0:26:27And he knew the structure of buildings.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31And this was a preparation, of course, for this painting?
0:26:31 > 0:26:33That's correct.
0:26:37 > 0:26:41John, this couldn't be anything other than a Kyffin Williams, could it?
0:26:41 > 0:26:43It's a signature painting, isn't it?
0:26:43 > 0:26:45Well, it's a bold statement.
0:26:45 > 0:26:47It's iconic, isn't it?
0:26:47 > 0:26:50The way the paint has been put on, this black lining which he's
0:26:50 > 0:26:53picked up from the drawing which we've just seen there.
0:26:53 > 0:26:57This is a very special technique, of course. You've got
0:26:57 > 0:27:03a palette knife being used, very thick colour, being put on very, very quickly.
0:27:03 > 0:27:05But incredibly skilfully.
0:27:09 > 0:27:13Thick paint is delightful to use.
0:27:13 > 0:27:21And I like that paint, and I like drawing with the brush into thick, palette knife paint.
0:27:21 > 0:27:26It pleases me. It may not please other people, but it pleases me, and that's the important thing.
0:27:26 > 0:27:28I enjoy it.
0:27:28 > 0:27:34And the strong contrast produced by a knife, using some ivory black and
0:27:34 > 0:27:42yellow ochre against some bright, light, flake white sky or something, to me, it is satisfying.
0:27:42 > 0:27:46He liked to get the paint out and mix it very, very quickly.
0:27:46 > 0:27:48Not completely, sometimes.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53And take it up on the palette knife and put it on, almost like butter, what they call impasto.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56He became very, very keen on this technique.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59The main reason was, it gave this lovely, sculptural effect.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02We see all these impasto areas here.
0:28:02 > 0:28:05And it gave a dynamic to it, it was almost like a sculpture.
0:28:07 > 0:28:11The main emphasis was to develop a style of his own.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16The old adage that once you've seen one Kyffin, you've seen them all, is absolute rubbish.
0:28:33 > 0:28:36Painters like Kyffin Williams and many others established
0:28:36 > 0:28:40a popular tradition of Welsh art concerned mainly with landscape.
0:28:40 > 0:28:46In our final programme, we'll be looking at the end of the 20th century, when some artists
0:28:46 > 0:28:51broke with painting and sculpture to challenge the very notion of art itself.
0:29:04 > 0:29:06Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:29:06 > 0:29:08E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk