I went along to the Royal College of Art to see the GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years and Beyond exhibition, which runs until 22 December. It spans from 1963 to the present. But, importantly, the years from 1948 to 1963 were the very foundation of British contemporary graphics. Although not included in this exhibition I was commissioned to write an essay on the period. It will appear in the forthcoming book that accompanies the exhibition...
One of the things that struck me about the period was the lack of female designers and illustrators that went on to greater heights post-RCA when compared to their male counterparts. Of course, marriage and children are the main disruptors; caring for the family leeches the creative force through sheer fatigue, leaving little enthusiasm for much else. I have always found it a sad fact that so many highly creative women are curtailed before they lift off to fulfil their potential.
Two RCA female alumnae of the 1950s that did surface were June Fraser, who produced large-scale station mural for the Leicester Square Underground Station and went on to become a design advisor for John Lewis. The other was Gaynor Chapman, who also has a London Underground connection.
Born in 1935, Chapman attended the Epsom School of Art and was one of the bright young things at the RCA in the early ’50s, where she studied illustration and graphics. The combination of these two disciplines is very evident in her work, which has a deliberate, compartmentalised graphic structure, emphasised by the use of a visible, irregular black keyline. Some of her most stunning pieces were commissioned by London Transport for its poster series. Have a look...
Radio Times cover 1966
English Tourist Board 1965.
BP advertisement for the Glyndebourne Opera Festival 1965
She also produced projects for BP, COI, Shell, ICI and Air France, and she created a large mural for the ship SS Dover. Most of her work appeared in the 1960s/1970s, when she taught graphics at the Brighton College of Art and continued to paint. She died in 2000, aged 65.