About the Artist
B. 1947 Born in Sri Lanka, but primarily raised in England, Julian Lethbridge studied at Westchester College and Cambridge University (1960-1969). Upon graduation, he began a career as a banker, but by 1972 had moved to New York to paint and draw. His first exhibition of paintings and drawings at Julian Pretto Gallery (1988) was followed within the next year by one-person exhibitions at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco.
Lethbridge's abstraction is cerebral, often based on mathematical or natural principles. Methodically building up his surfaces with pigment, he then incises them with repeated patterns. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Lethbridge limited his work to shades of black and white, mining the richness of monochromatic painting. More recently he has begun to introduce vibrant colors and more gestural brushwork into his paintings. Lethbridge began printing at ULAE in 1989.
