Robert Owen Medley (1905-1994)

Painter, printmaker, theatre designer, teacher and writer, born in London, where he lived for much of his life. Studied at Byam Shaw School, 1923-24, briefly at Royal Academy Schools in 1924, then at Slade School of Fine Art, 1924-26, under Tonks and Steer. There he met Roger Fry and Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury set. He spent two years in Paris, 1926-28. From 1929-34 he assisted Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. He showed with LG from 1929, becoming a member in 1937, and helped to establish the AIA the year before. He had his first solo show at London Artists' Association, 1932. In the same year he became associated with Rupert Doone, director of Group Theatre, and designed the sets for plays by W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and T. S. Eliot. By the mid 1930s he was moving away from the ideals of the Bloomsbury set, having met and become friends with Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Paul Nash. In 1936 Medley took part