PAUL MCCARTNEY
b. 1942, United KingdomPaul McCartney was born in Liverpool, England, in 1942. Passionate about art from a young age, McCartney became attuned to the medium of photography as a teenager upon seeing the pictures published in the sports section of the Observer, as well as those taken by his younger brother, Michael. This was reinforced when The Beatles, during their time in Hamburg, Germany, befriended the photographers Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer, who were influential in helping the group form a distinct visual identity.
In the mid-1960s McCartney encountered the British avant-garde through John Dunbar, a cofounder of Indica Books and Gallery, and gallerist Robert Fraser, who introduced McCartney to Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton—the latter two artists invited by McCartney to design Beatles album covers that became instantly iconic.
In the early 1980s, inspired by a discussion with Willem de Kooning, McCartney took up painting, exhibiting his work at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in 2000, and at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in 2002. The debut exhibition of his photographs, Eyes of the Storm, was organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2023.
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