The Art Library of
Dr Alastair Grieve.
Part 1

Room & Book is delighted to announce the acquisition of the library of pioneering British art historian, Dr Alastair Grieve (1940-2022). An extraordinary collection and archive of one of Britain’s most significant art historians, Dr Grieve’s library encompasses two centuries of art history from The Pre-Raphaelites to the British Constructionists and includes documentation of some of the most important exhibitions in the history of British art. Acquired over a lifetime of research and collecting, this vast body of material totals more than 5,000 books, catalogues, multiples and ephemera, related to artists and subjects on which Dr Grieve wrote extensively.

A renowned expert in both the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, (the revival of which he played a crucial role in), as well as the establishment of constructed abstract art in England after the Second World War, Dr Alastair Grieve was the inaugural curator of the University of East Anglia Art Collection where he pioneered an important re-evaluation of the neglected British Constructionists. He began shaping the University of East Anglia art collection in 1968 along with UEA Librarian, Willi Guttsman and Professor of Fine Arts, Peter Lasko. Now part of the Sainsbury Centre, it includes over 600 works including the English Vorticists, the Russian Suprematists and Constructivists, the British Constructionists, the Dutch De Stijl Group and the German Bauhaus School.

Intrinsically linked to the UEA art collection, (the shaping of which it directly informed), Dr Grieve’s private library holds extensive archival material including hard to find ephemeral catalogues central to the history of modern British art. The small selection below includes important material such as the catalogue of “Art and Machine” the first exhibition of the University of East Anglia’s art collection curated by Dr Grieve in 1968; the rare catalogue of the International Exhibition of Concrete Poetry held at the University of East Anglia in 1975; the inaugural exhibition of the ICA London held in 1948; the catalogue of the British Pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale; the catalogue of the exhibition The Unknown Political Prisoner held at the Tate Gallery in 1952; the catalogue of the V&A’s 1945 Matisse / Picasso exhibition; and the 1968 Studio International Special Issue dedicated to the ICA’s groundbreaking exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity. It also includes a group of multiples by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Richard Long as well as catalogues of significant exhibitions of Eileen Agar, Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick, Barbara Hepworth, Gilbert and George, Jessie M. King, Leon Kossoff, Peter Lanyon, Henri Laurens, Mary Martin, Kenneth Martin, Henry Moore and Andy Warhol.

Dr Grieve remained closely associated with the UEA art collection for over four decades; initially as curator between 1968 and 1977 then continuing to work closely with the collection following its absorption into the Sainsbury Centre in 1978. A teaching academic in the School of World Art Studies & Museology at UEA (now the School of Art History and World Art Studies) until 2004, Dr Grieve published widely on artists in the collection following his retirement, including Victor Pasmore, Kenneth and Mary Martin, Adrian Heath, Anthony Hill, Robert Adams, John Ernest, Gillian Wise and Mary Webb among many others. The culmination of this research was the book Constructed Abstract Art in England: A Neglected Avant-Garde, which appeared in 2005.