Sylvester, David Bernard

▪ 2002

      British art critic and exhibition curator (b. Sept. 21, 1924, London, Eng.—d. June 19, 2001, London), was a towering figure in the British art world and a champion of Modernism, most notably the works of Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, and René Magritte. Although he had no formal training, Sylvester discovered an interest in art at age 17, unsuccessfully tried his hand at painting, and began writing art reviews in 1942 for the socialist weekly Tribune, of which George Orwell was literary editor. In 1945 Sylvester's last article for the magazine, a review of a book on Moore, attracted the notice of the artist, who hired him as a part-time assistant. Sylvester curated his first exhibition, a Moore retrospective, at the Tate Gallery in 1951. By the 1960s Sylvester had gained tremendous influence through his lectures and exhibitions, as well as his pithy reviews, articles, and catalog essays. He also had broadened his zeal to include nonfigurative artists, such as Jackson Pollock (whose work he had initially disparaged) and Willem de Kooning (he organized a de Kooning exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1977), and Pop art. Sylvester appeared on the 1964 BBC television series Ten Modern Artists and at various times served on the Arts Council, the British Film Institute production board, the board of trustees for the Tate and Serpentine galleries, and the acquisitions board of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris. His books included Henry Moore (1968), Interviews with Francis Bacon (1975; revised and expanded as The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, 1987), Magritte: The Silence of the World (1992), About Modern Art: Critical Essays, 1948–1996 (1996), and the five-volume Magritte catalogue raisonné, which took him 25 years to complete. Sylvester was made CBE in 1983.

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