RENOWNED Cyprus-based artist Glyn Hughes has died aged 83. Hughes died of a heart attack in Limassol hospital yesterday morning.
Hughes came to Cyprus in 1956 and first worked at the Junior School from then until to the early ’90s, and taught countless children the wonders of light and colour in art. The children returned the favour – according to Hughes, it was not until he started teaching them that he learned a valuable lesson himself.
He said in an interview last year: “In those days you could buy earth colours and I used them to paint strong abstract shapes, sometimes adding sand. The landscape was very white and the stark contrast of olive trees against the dusty ground led to a particular use of these earth colours. It was not until I taught children that I discovered full colour”.
Hughes was born in Wales in 1931 – but always considered himself a ‘Cypriot’ – and studied art at Bretton Hall, Yorkshire before taking up his teaching post in Nicosia. In 1960 he founded the first gallery in Cyprus, the Apophasis Gallery, with Christoforos Savva and then went on to create Synergy, a combination of a conceptual and environmental art event, held annually until 1974.
From 1975, he held a prolific collaboration with the German director Heinz Uwe Haus both in Cyprus and abroad and with the Cyprus Theatre Organisation. His theatre sets and costume designs have covered a broad spectrum of plays from ancient Greek tragedy to contemporary playwrights and been used in Cyprus, Athens, Thessaloniki, Epidaurus and Edinburgh. Hughes lectured extensively on Cypriot contemporary art, on Berthold Brecht, William Hogarth, German expressionism and other subjects both in Nicosia and Athens, while his work has been on display in solo and group shows from China to Australia.
Hughes was also an art critic for media in Cyprus and worked for both the Cyprus Mail and the Cyprus Weekly at different times over the years, and his studio and home, an old house in Kaimakli, was a Bohemian haven, according to Lauren O’Hara, who interviewed Hughes for the Cyprus Mail. “Everywhere amongst the clutter and colour are things to catch your attention and imagination – huge canvasses waiting to be finished, newspaper cuttings of a dying Che Guevara, an old stone trough, faded tiles. It’s a treasure trove of memories and memorabilia, quirky and individual like its owner,” she wrote.
Hughes was an early riser, often awake at 4.30am before dawn. He was also a lifetime reader of The Guardian. Politics, people and a passion for colour were all reflected in his paintings. He was always at pains to point out that he did not consider himself original, that he had inevitably been influenced by artists such as Picasso or Gillian Ayres.
Hughes was constantly aware and awake to the world, and there were few days when he didn’t paint, and often worked on pieces simultaneously. Painting was a compulsion and he could not imagine a life without creativity. If he didn’t finish them in two weeks, he never would, he told his interviewer.
As a young man, his first love was the stage, which brought him into the world of set design.
He also witnessed first-hand the changing fortunes of Cyprus and stayed put during the troubles, sleeping in fields before returning to set up a studio close to the Green Line.
Unlike many artists he also enjoyed seeing the work of others and encouraging new talent. Often his evenings would be spent attending galleries and writing about art.
He believed in leaving something tangible behind to, in his own words, prove that he had “not wasted his life”.
“There is always someone worse off than you – so don’t laugh at them only laugh at your own tears,” he said.
