Many of the international Christian arts community were saddened to learn that the art historian and author Dr Graham Birtwistle had died at his home in Amsterdam on 6 October.
Originally from Accrington, Graham had an international career, starting as a lecturer in art history at Leicester Polytechnic. Later, his name became linked with that of the Dutch Professor Hans Rookmaaker (1922–1977), whose work, as Graham wrote, “left an indelible impression” on his life. Rookmaaker’s visits to England in the 1960s and 70s had an immense impact on British art students, particularly when his book Modern Art and the Death of a Culture was published in 1970. Graham was one of a number who travelled to study with him at the Vrije Universität (Free University) in Amsterdam. Another Englishman studying under Rookmaaker was John Walford, who went on to become Professor of Art History at Wheaton College, Illinois. The two became housemates and the cottage they and others shared was a significant “hub” for students and artists seeking to work out a Christian worldview within the arts.
Graham remained at the Free University to achieve his doctorate, and became Associate Professor in Modern Art, until his retirement in 2004. He wrote in both Dutch and English, which meant that his many contributions to Dutch Christian publications are not well known in England. He was an authority on the artists of the COBRA group whose abstract work was an expression of freedom from the restrictions imposed by Nazi occupation in Europe (COBRA stands for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). His book Living Art, on the Danish COBRA artist Asger Jorn, was published in English in 1986, and in 2003 he was involved in organising the first COBRA exhibition in England, at the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle.
