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Debris

Printmaker: Fleming, Ian, RSA, Dr · 1906-1994

Debris

During the Second World war Fleming was living in Glasgow where he was a lecturer at the School of Art. He reigned this post in 1940 to join up but…

During the Second World war Fleming was living in Glasgow where he was a lecturer at the School of Art. He reigned this post in 1940 to join up but was rejected by the Army as he was in a reserved occupation. he was then accepted in the Police as a reservist. In this capacity he witnessed the effects of air raids on Clydeside which became the subject of oil paintings and etchings.

From 1941 until his de-mobbing in 1946 he served with the Pioneer Corps, initially as a Second Lieutenant, rising to the rank of Acting-Major. Landing originally in Normandy his war service took him through the low Countries and across the Rhine into Germany. He never went anywhere without sheets of paper and something to draw with.

in the interview which formed the text for the major retrospective exhibition of his work at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen in 1983, Fleming stated [of his Normandy sketches]; "I didn't do anything, by way of etching, of these things. The so-called war prints are all of the blitz in Glasgow." The present work would appear to contradict this. In the same interview Fleming said that "During the years after the war, there was no etching of any sort being done anywhere......It was only after I started to work up here in Aberdeen, in 1954, when we decided to develop printmaking at Gray's that I took up etching again."

Fleming showed a number of his war-time scenes in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Glasgow Institute for the Fine Arts. The present work is not known to have been exhibited by him in his lifetime, and may be based on his memories of an actual scene rather than a documentary record of it.

© The Artist's Estate