Alan Lee Turner (1943-2020), Bronx, New York) studied at the City College of New York, and undertook a master’s degree at the University of California Berkeley, before returning to New York to teach at the School of Visual Arts. Between 1968 and 1972, he lived in London – initially staying with David Hockney, who had taught him at Berkeley. Working primarily in painting and drawing, Turner’s idiosyncratic practice is both influenced by Surrealism and yet concerned with material truth and the nature of looking. Nature and the human body feature prominently within his work. Often rendered in hypnotic colour or reconfigured such that reality becomes estranged, his subject matter is pushed to the point of illogic, dually evoking an atmosphere that is both humorous and disturbing. His work is held in public collections including those of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Denver Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.
