Victor Willing

Willing was born on 15 January 1928 in Alexandria, Egypt, the only son of George Willing, professional soldier, and his wife Irene Cynthia Tomkins.

On returning to the UK his father was posted to various parts of southern England, including the Isle of Wight and Bordon, Hampshire.

Fellow entrants that year included Michael Andrews, Henry Inlander[1] and James Burr, while Euan Uglow, Craigie Aitchison, Paula Rego and Myles Murphy also overlapped subsequently.

Willing was admired by his fellow students for his adventurous talent and intellectual zest, and was denoted 'spokesman for his generation' by the critic David Sylvester.

Paintings were bought by the Arts Council of Great Britain and also by Sir Colin Anderson, a notable supporter of young artists.

[8] An impressive Man Watching (a sentry standing in front of red railings), which was shown at the ICA in 1953, is believed lost.

Willing was discouraged when the more adventurous Lech, Precarious Drag and Untitled, which relate more closely to his late work, were viewed unfavourably by a critic friend, and he reverted to painting (as he put it) 'stodgy nudes'.

Art took on a lesser role for the next eight years until the Portuguese revolution of 1974 led to the failure of the business and the eventual return of the family – which now included Caroline, Victoria and Nick Willing – to live permanently in London.

Willing decided that he had to return to his true métier; he rented a room in a disused school in Stepney, east London, and began to paint.

With his increasing disability the large paintings of the earlier eighties gave place to smaller, his last exhibition being of a series of Heads at the Karsten Schubert Gallery in 1987.

In 1993 Karsten Schubert published a selection of his writings and two conversations with John McEwen, while in 2000 appeared the August Media multi-authored study of his work.

In 2008, the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester exhibited its holdings of his paintings, bequeathed to them by the architect Colin St John Wilson, alongside some loans of early work.

An extensive retrospective exhibition, curated by Helmut Wohl, opened at the Casa das Historias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal, on 9 September 2010, and closed on 2 January 2011.

By his second marriage, to feminist artist Paula Rego, he had two daughters - Caroline 'Cas' Willing and Victoria Willing, and a son Nick Willing, a director, producer and writer of films and television series.