Dennis Hawkins - Pentecost I

Acts of the Apostles 2: 1–4

The descent of the Holy Spirit, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, marked the birth of the Church, and is represented by an intense circle of white light, painted on the top of an old school desk. In this way Hawkins represents the success of the Church penetrating unlikely nooks and crannies and dark corners throughout the world and illuminating them with the light of the Holy Ghost. In the 1960s Hawkins produced dozens of “Pentecosts”. The traditional iconography of Pentecost was tongues of fire, but instead he chose to use the circle or sphere. He saw it as a numinous object, mysterious without beginning or end and all-embracing, an ideal symbol for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Epsom, Surrey, UK, 1925

Died:  Derbyshire, UK, 2001

Education

Dennis Hawkins studied at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, from 1947 to 1952. He then studied at the Slade School of Art, London from 1949 to 1952 where his teachers included Sir William Coldstream and Graham Sutherland.

Life and career

Hawkins spent most of his working life as Director of Art at Repton School in Derbyshire. He first became known for his printmaking. He was a founder member of the Printmakers Council and went on to be its chairman in 1971-72. His lithographs were exhibited all over the world, becoming particularly popular in North America.

In the early 1960s, he turned to making reliefs and constructions, including the Pentecost series, one of which is held in the Methodist Modern Art Collection. His Pentecost works are abstract and are therefore not an attempt to illustrate the Pentecost story but “to evoke or symbolise the Holy Spirit, affirming the experience of Pentecost in our own lives.” He saw spiritual experience as being available to everyone in their day to day lives “whether we recognise it or not” (Hawkin’s letter to Douglas Wollen, 11 May 1993).

In the 1960s and early 1970s he received large commissions for series of paintings, sculptures and reliefs for schools and hospitals. He produced relief concrete panelling in abstract form for the exterior of Nether Edge Hospital, Sheffield in 1993 and produced paintings for the wards which were bright, colourful and realistic. His abstract reliefs are very much within the British constructivist tradition, represented by artists such as Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and the Circle and Unit One groups.

Hawkins continued his interest in spirituality in his later works, drawing inspiration from Zen ideas and theories, particularly the importance of light and colour.

Solo exhibitions include the New Vision Gallery, London (1958); the Zwemmer Gallery, London (1962 and 1964); and a touring exhibition in the USA (1973 to 1974).

His group exhibitions include Gimpel Fils, London (1952); and the International Print Biennales in Tokyo and Florence. As well as the Sheffield Hospital panelling and painting, he received commissions for a cross in the crypt of St Wystan’s Church, Repton and a depiction of the crucifixion for Repton School (1979-80).

Among others, his work is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery; and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L. Vol. 1 of 2 volumes (Bristol, Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006), p. 701. This text is also available on the Art UK website: https://artuk.org/discover/artists/hawkins-dennis-19252001 (viewed 18 September 2024)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 52-53

Roger Wollen, Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art with an Account of the Collection’s History, (Oxford, The Trustees of the Methodist Collection of Modern Christian Art, 2003), p. 77-80