Collection: Ceri Richards   1903 - 1971 

Ceri Richards was born in 1903 near Swansea to a Welsh-speaking family where music and poetry (influences on his work) were positively encouraged. A gifted draughtsman at school, he left to be apprentice in a firm of electricians in Swansea, devoting his evenings to studying engineering draughtsmanship at Swansea College of Technology and drawing at the Swansea College of Art.

He was a versatile artist, able to absorb many influences without sacrificing his originality. From 1933 he worked on a series of relief constructions and assemblages which were described by John Rothenstein as ‘original creations of a rare order, and unlike anything else done in Britain at the time’. Much of his work was inspired by his love of music and the poetry of Dylan Thomas.