David Leverett : Paintings and Prints

David Leverett (1938–2020) was a British painter whose distinguished career spanned more than five decades, encompassing abstract painting, collage, landscape, teaching, and exhibition design. Born in Nottingham in 1938, he studied at Nottingham College of Art (1957–1961) before continuing his training at the Royal Academy Schools in London (1962–1965).His first solo exhibition was held at the Redfern Gallery, London, in 1965, marking the start of a prolific exhibiting career. Throughout the 1960s, he appeared in significant shows including Young Contemporaries, the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, British Painting and Sculpture at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the Royal Academy Bicentenary Exhibition.Leverett’s work developed through a sustained engagement with landscape—both as a means of exploring humanity’s place within the natural world and as a reflection on the environmental forces that shape our lives. Working across abstraction and landscape, he produced paintings of remarkable scale and ambition, often combining expressive colour, gesture, and structure to evoke the dynamism of nature. His celebrated Sacred Gardens series, exhibited at the Redfern Gallery in 1990, exemplified the epic and contemplative qualities that characterised much of his mature work.Though not easily classifiable, Leverett is often associated with Pittura Analitica (or “Analytical-Painting”), a movement in which he brought an authentic poetic sensibility. His canvases are marked by intense, dynamic colour that seems to vibrate like musical notes, using synaesthesia to expand the conceptual scope of contemporary art and a continuous drive to push beyond its boundaries. [artribune]