Denis Mitchell 1912-1993

Denis Adeane Mitchell was born on 30 June 1912 in Wealdstone, Middlesex. As an infant, he moved with his mother and brother Endell to Mumbles, a pretty fishing port and holiday village tucked in the eastern edge of the Gower peninsula near Swansea in South Wales. Although money was always short (Mitchell was not born into a world of wealth and art appreciation as many of his ultimate contemporaries were) he recalled an idyllic childhood with the possible exception on 1924 when he spent a year off Mumbles Grammar school with tuberculosis.

Mitchell left school at 16 with no qualifications and after a series of attempted odd jobs he found employment at a commercial art studio. He became involved with dramatics at the Little Theatre in Swansea where he was drawn to set construction and design and met Dylan Thomas with whom he remained in contact throughout the 1930s.

In 1930, aged 18, Mitchell moved to Cornwall with his brother Endell to convert two cottages belonging to their aunt in Balnoon, Halsetown, two miles south of St Ives, into one house. Ultimately the brothers stayed on at the house. This move was transformative placing him in the small but burgeoning artistic community in St Ives.  He recalled from his trips into St Ives during this period “I saw this little bent old fisherman sitting outside his house with a lot of paintings on cardboard arranged on orange boxes, and a large model yacht. I stopped to look at them and thought, what a lot of childish work. It was Alfred Wallis and I now treasure on my walls at home three of his paintings.” Whilst Denis and Endell were developing a small market garden at Balnoon Mitchell’s mind was turning more to painting and his early creative output was 2-dimensional rather than 3. In 1935 he travelled with his brother Endell to Gibraltar at a time when Civil War was about to break out in neighbouring Spain. After a brusque interrogation with Spanish border guards the brothers opted for Tangier, where they spent a month sketching and painting. The trip emboldened Mitchell and brightened his palette.

In September 1939 Denis married his St Ives sweetheart, Jane Stevens.

During World War II, Mitchell worked as a miner at Geevor Tin Mine on the rugged north coast of west Cornwall near Land’s End, partly as a Bevin Boy (a wartime scheme to supply labour to essential industries). The experience of mining (“subterranean carving” as he called it), using tools, working physically under difficult conditions had a strong influence upon his later sculptural work. During war time he also met Adrian Stokes and Bernard Leach through the Home Guard. The latter meeting was ultimately fortuitous and instrumental in his progression towards becoming a fully-fledged sculptor as it was Leach who later introduced Mitchel to Barbara Hepworth.

The austere post-war years were challenging but also exciting for Denis and his young family as he did various manual/semi-manual jobs (market gardening, fishing) while continuing to paint and exhibit locally, including at the Crypt of the new gallery at the converted Norway Chapel. Other exhibitors included Hepworth, Nicholson, Wynter, Lanyon and Wells.

In 1949, Bernard Leach recommended Mitchell to Hepworth, who was seeking an assistant. What began as three day’s employment turned into a decade-long collaboration. From 1949 to 1959, Mitchell served as her principal assistant, playing a vital role in the production of many of her major works during one of her most productive decades. His relationship with Barbara Hepworth was formative for Mitchell and effectively served him as an apprenticeship under one of the twentieth century’s masters of sculpture. With Hepworth’s guidance Mitchell learned to master carving, casting, and finishing, developing a deep understanding of materials such as wood, stone, and bronze and the imperative of purity of form. Working alongside Hepworth exposed him to the international modernist movement and the rigorous discipline of large-scale sculptural practice. While supporting her studio, Mitchell began to create his own works. His early independent works; slate reliefs, wooden carvings, and eventually bronzes - show a refinement of form and surface that reflected Hepworth’s influence while moving toward his own distinctive style.

Denis formed close and constructive friendships with many of the St Ives Modernists and vividly remembered a visit to Henry Moore with Patrick Heron and his wife Delia. In 1953 Ben Nicholson paid for Mitchell to travel to London to see the exhibition of Mexican art at the Tate. Nicolson flet this was a must-see exhibition for the aspiring sculptor and it indeed inspired many of Mitchell’s works.

In 1959 Denis struck out on his own departing Hepworth’s studio and, encouraged by Ben Nicholson, beginning to sculpt in bronze. To afford the castings he used a sand-casting foundry in St Just in Penwith in the far west of Cornwall. Mitchell later reflected that with hindsight this had two benefits; only simple forms could be cast demanding a strict discipline of sculpted form, and the castings came out rough-cast requiring him to draw upon his carving skills to refine the form to achieve a purity of line and surface.  His experience with Hepworth had provided him both the technical foundation and professional confidence to pursue a full-time career, which would lead to international exhibitions in New York, Chicago, London and Edinburgh and recognition as one of the key figures of the St Ives school.

Mitchell was always generous with his time and support for his contemporaries. He was a founder-member of the Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall, and served as Chairman from 1955 to 1957. During the 1960s, he taught part-time at Redruth School of Art and Penzance Grammar School while continuing to develop his sculptural practice. Although bronzes dominated his output in the sixties Mitchell continued to carve with wood, notably lignum vitae, and slate and in 1966 won an Arts Council Award, for work in bronzes, wood carvings and slate reliefs.

In 1967 he ceased teaching to become a full-time sculptor, relocating his studio to Trewarveneth in Newlyn (sharing a large studio complex at the invitation of long-time friend and fellow artist John Wells) and later buying a house, “La Pietra”, nearby. His work increasingly showed mature abstract forms in highly finished polished bronzes, elegant reliefs, and unique one-off sculptures in wood and slate. In 1974 he was joined by Terry Frost in Newlyn; with Wells, Mitchell and Frost relocating to Newlyn it must have seemed that the St Ives modernists were reinhabiting the birthplace of Cornwall’s artistic ascendancy, with Walter Langley and Edwin Harris’s arrival in 1883 and the foundation of the Newlyn School.

Mitchell also began receiving international commissions and exhibiting abroad including a commission by the Foreign Office in 1968 for Zelah No. 1 (bronze) for the University of the Andes in Colombia; teaching and lecture tours in Colombia, exhibitions in New Zealand and British Council tours.

Mitchell’s style is marked by a tension between polished, flowing surfaces and more rugged, raw textures. His works tend to be elegant, often streamlined forms, with references to organic shapes. There is also a strong sense of the landscape of Cornwall, and of his experiences working underground. His titles usually assign Cornish place-names as in Nanjivey. The sculptor often took casts from foundries and then spent considerable effort in filing, chiselling, polishing, finishing them by hand to achieve the desired surface and texture.

Denis Mitchell continued working actively into old age. In the 1970s and 1980s, he produced substantial new works; his exhibitions and commissions continued. He also served in governance roles in art education: Governor of Plymouth College of Art and Design and Falmouth School of Art.

Denis Mitchell died on 23 March 1993, in Newlyn, Cornwall. At the time, his last major solo exhibition (at Flowers East in London) had just opened.

His work is held in many public collections, in the UK and internationally: Tate Gallery; Arts Council of Great Britain; National Galleries in Australia and New Zealand; Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; Glynn Vivian in Swansea; Hepworth Gallery, etc.