The Hepworth Wakefield celebrated the art of one of the country’s greatest living novelists and playwrights, David Storey.
More than 400 small-scale works created by the Wakefield-born writer were on public display for the first time. The exhibition presented hundreds of Storey’s drawings made during an intense late life period of creativity (2006–12), a small selection of earlier works (1987–9), as well as his books, archive posters of his theatre productions and films, and personal photographs.
The son of a mineworker, Storey was born and brought up in 1930s Wakefield and attended the Wakefield School of Art (1951–3) before moving to London where he trained as an artist at the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art. There he met British painter Stanley Spencer, sculptor Henry Moore and was taught life drawing by Lucien Freud.
Before turning to writing, Storey had various jobs, ranging from farm labourer and show-ground tent-erecter to professional rugby league player for Leeds. These experiences all fed into his creative work, notably This Sporting Life (1960), the novel that made his name.
