Winston Branch
LIGHT ACROSS THE BAY, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
90 1/2 x 55 1/8 in
230 x 140 cm
Available at Surovek Gallery
Winston Branch OBE (b.1947) is one of Britain’s most prominent artists. He was born and raised in Saint Lucia and sent to London to study art when he was just 12 years old.
Branch studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he won the British Prix de Rome and attended the British School at Rome in 1971. He went on to tutor at Hornsey College and at Goldsmiths College in London.
His first trip to the US was in 1973, as Artist-in-Residence at Fisk University in Nashville. He went on to teach at UC Berkley. In 1976 he was awarded a Fellowship and spent a year studying in Berlin. In 1978 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and left Berlin to travel to the US.
He had rented a studio in Berlin, but when he returned to Berlin from the US, he found that his personal belongings and all his paintings had been removed from the studio. Branch said that, at the time, he “was living from hand to mouth” and had not paid rent for two months. He thought that he would never see the paintings again.
Nearly fifty years had elapsed, but Branch did get to see the paintings again.
It turned out that the landlord had stored the paintings and sold them to an architect who took them to his home in Greece. The architect sold them to Galerie Volker Diehl in Berlin. The gallery contacted Branch.
Because of the possible dispute of ownership, the recovered paintings, which are his early, figurative works, were shown at the gallery in May 2025, with Branch receiving a percentage of the sales, and buying one of them himself.
The works of Winston Branch are in the permanent collections of the Tate, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The British Museum, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paolo, The Guggenheim, The Legion of Honour de Young Museum in San Francisco, The St Louis Museum of Art, The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Hamburger Kunsthalle Museum, the University of California at Berkeley, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Contemporary Art Society, UK.
His work is currently on exhibit in a group exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection will be on view through July 11, 2027.
Winston Branch works in his studios in London and California.
References:
Dalya Alberge. Artist’s works resurface nearly five decades after disappearing from Berlin studio. The Guardian. May 1, 2025.
Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of Winston Branch available at Surovek Gallery.
