Biography
Painter, printmaker, teacher and writer, born in Dorking, Surrey, son of the poet and scholar R C Trevelyan. Educated at Bedales School and Cambridge University, where he was a member of the Experiments group. For several years in the early 1930s studied with S W Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris. His early work was experimental, his paintings incorporating everyday objects. At University he had written that "to dream is to create" and so it was logical that he became one of the English Surrealist Group in 1936. During service as a camouflage officer in the Royal Engineers during World War II he declared his religion to be Surrealism. His pictures, in a variety of styles, retained a dreamlike, often childlike, fantastic quality. Was married to the potter, Ursula Darwin, marriage dissolved in 1950; then the painter Mary Fedden from 1951. He was a tutor at the Chelsea School of Art, 1950-60, and engraving tutor at the Royal College of Art, 1955-63. Made hon. senior RA in 1986. Published his autobiography Indigo Days in 1957. Tate Gallery holds his work.