Andrew Litten British, b. 1970
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Overview
I want to create emotively led art that speaks of the love, personal growth, anger, loss and the private confusions we all experience. Perhaps subversive, tender, malevolent, compassionate – the need to see raw human existence drives it all forward.ANDREW IS A (MAINLY) SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTAndrew Litten can be considered an ‘Outsider’. Self-taught and working away from the mainstream, his practice is raw, uncooked and unadulterated by culture.
His work exposes the raw, visceral identity of the human subconscious. He strips bare the protective facade of the seemingly mundane and ordinary, revealing our deepest fears attached to love, angst, sadness and identity. Like voyeurs, we are happy to look in on the frailties of others, but at the same time, we are forced to confront the idea that, in essence, we are observing ourselves. This duality provokes both attachment and repulsion in equal measure.
Recent work has established strong humanistic themes such as social alienation, drug use, ageing and other wide-ranging identity disturbance issues. As well as working with traditional media (canvas and paper), Litten is well-known for his use of found objects and other materials to heighten and emphasise the visual.
Much sought after, both in the UK and abroad, his work is owned by Anthony Petullo, one of the foremost collectors of ‘Outsider’ art in the United States.
We have a body of early work (1990-2007) for sale. £1,000+Please email the gallery for information
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Works
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Boy in Bed (Obsessive Counting), 2007
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Bus, 2005
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Loitering (Vicar), 2001
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Sitting Nude, 2002
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Two Smokers, 1993
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With Two Dogs, 2003
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Her Bed, 2006
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The Field, 1992
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Alcohol Now, 2013
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Holding, 1999
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Bed Legs, 1999
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Impotent Worry, 2016
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Hoodies, 2009
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Instructor, 2013
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Love, 2009
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Polaroid, 2006
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Polaroid, 2006
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Reclining Nude, 2006
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Seated Nude, 2006
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Man With Dust and Dirt, 2011
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Thinking of Evil, 2012
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Home, 2002
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Press
Andrew Litten’s work explores raw human existence. Andrew is searching for poetry, the poetry of living, loving, hurting and dying; the vulnerable, the powerful, the human. His work carries extreme experience, passion and flippancy, allure and repulsion. These qualities and Andrew’s sense of purpose have been influenced by the powerful poetic art of Louise Bourgeois, the master of interpreting our human beast within.
Dr Jane Boyer, academic researcher, writer, artist-curatorArt is a bad liar. Many contemporary painters aspire to a raw, self-taught aesthetic, but their rawness quickly reveals itself as cooked-up. Litten bears the stamp of authenticity. The meanings of his images may be elusive, but they work on our feelings because they are felt.
Laura Gascoigne, independent arts writer, including The Spectator, The Tablet, JackdawLitten’s paintings have always confronted the viewer with the psychological weight and emotional intensity of the physical world, suffused with the darkness that can run through life, but now there s also a feeling of lightness as if these weighty forms have been permeated by the weightlessness of atoms, liberated by movement and transformed by a new luminosity.
Dr Richard Davey, research fellow in the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University. Art essays include Anselm Kiefer for the Royal Academy of ArtsLitten’s influences range from Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard to Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin and Louise Bourgeois. Like Bourgeois, Litten mines pain to vivifying effect, and it becomes a force for connection. “Through these works, I seek to create stories of authenticity and to explore the part of us that wants to care – to compress a sense of endurance of human spirit,” Litten says.
Sophie Hastings, freelance features writer, including Observer, The Gentlewoman, GQ, ARTnewsLitten’s expressionist paintings challenge engagement. Complex, varied and layered, they reach into the human condition and draw out the viscera of mind states: depression, sex, dependency, anger, fear, all our most private corners are opened. The pictures are exciting and calming at the same time because they seek to reveal the mind, not really the artist’s but somehow the looker’s, and explain.
Simon Tait, freelance arts and features writer for The Independent, The Times, the Evening Standard and FT -
