Deanna Petherbridge CBE, born Pretoria, South Africa in 1939 is an artist, writer, teacher and curator primarily concerned with drawing. She lives in London, although she has also had studios in Greece, Italy and India. A large-scale retrospective of her ink drawings on paper was celebrated at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2016-17 with the accompanying book 'Deanna Petherbridge: Drawing and Dialogue'. The triptych 'The Destruction of the City of Homs', 2016 first shown in Manchester is now in the Tate and was displayed at Tate Britain during 2019–2020 in the gallery of women's art, 'Sixty Years' part of the 'Walk through British Art.' The Destruction of Palmyra, 2017 exhibited in London in the exhibition Places of Change and Destruction and temporarily housed in Senate House, University of London will eventually be installed in the refurbished Warburg Institute, London. Her most recent London exhibition 'Drawing and the Domain of Politics', 2022 displayed two and three panel ink drawings concerned with Covid, with global warming, war and the impact of disturbing politics in the UK and internationally. She has written about these subjects as the burning material for artists in 'Drawing as Metaphor', 2022.
Her drawings are in many public collections in the UK and elsewhere. International exhibitions of her work include British Council touring shows in India, 1987–1988 and South East Asia, 1994–1995. She has designed for the stage at the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells, and her four-story mural on the curved drum-wall of the Symphony Hall is in the International Convention Centre, Birmingham.
She has undertaken lecture tours, residencies and fellowships in Europe, USA, South and East Asia and Australia. After teaching at UK institutions including the Architectural Association, Reading and Middlesex universities, she was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art, London in 1995 where she initiated the first doctoral programme in drawing in the UK and organised three international lecture series. Following a year's research as International Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles in 2001–2002, she held professorial posts at the University of the West of England, Bristol (subsequently named Professor Emerita) and Lincoln University. She was awarded CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1996, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 1998 and and received an Honorary Doctorate, University of Kingston in 2001.
Further information and a gallery of her drawings is available on DeannaPetherbridge.com
Text source: the artist
