Lydia Corbett, Picasso’s Sylvette, Penwith Gallery St Ives, March 8 to 6 April 2024
You can view this exhibition through extensive photographs online but far better to go there and enjoy the show in the large gallery where the displays of painted pots and the paintings and drawings which make a dynamic impact from a distance are displayed so beautifully and you can examine Lucien Berman’s book on Lydia Corbett’s ceramic objects, He was there when I visited and explained how despite failing sight Lydia can respond to the curved forms made for her and draw her designs of faces that enliven these pots, recalling how Picasso worked in Vallauris at the time when aged 19 she was drawn by him repeatedly.
Her paintings are very Picasso-esque with also influences from Chagall and I thought Bernard Buffet, who was promoted by her father. Her drawing style reminded me also of the illustrator Charles Keeping who drew for Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical children’s novels.
Lydia Corbett, now 90 years old, was present and I was so pleased to meet her. She has a gentle manner and French accent and a very positive inspirational attitude to life and the need to express love.
Her daughter Isabel Coulton was there and I congratulated her on the excellent book she wrote with her mother, ‘I was Sylvette’ which I re-read recently. It is a really captivating vivid account of Lydia’s life from being a child in occupied France through to school at Summerhill, and later living at Dartington School of Art. It is illustrated well with many family photographs that give a sense of her complicated history and her family connections. She only took up painting at 45 after her children were independant.
Naturally her relationship with Picasso is fascinating and she insists in the book that he treated her with respect - he was in his seventies - and was a fatherly figure with no sexual predation involved. She modelled for him clothed, with her blonde ponytail which she said was seen and copied by Brigitte Bardot.
The show is a room full of exuberant energy which whilst so reminiscent of Picasso reveals Lydia’s enjoyment of making her own use of his language.
Incidentally we have a great Picasso in Tate St Ives, a very sensitive expressive face, just round a corner in the main galleries and my favourite work in there.
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