Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Paul Mount

Born: Newton Abbot, Devon 1922. Died: Penzance, Cornwall 2009

Mount’s art training began at Paignton School of Art in 1937. From 1940-41 he studied at the Royal College of Art but this was interrupted by war service which, as a pacifist, he spent as an ambulance driver joining the French 2nd Armoured Division serving in Morocco and in the liberation of Paris and Strasbourg. After the war he returned to the RCA to study painting and went on to teach at Winchester School of Art for seven years during which time he began to exhibit his work at the Royal Academy, the London Group and the Royal Portrait Society among other venues.

In 1955 he took up the task of creating a new art department at the Yaba Technical Institute in Lagos, Nigeria. As a means of providing his students with marketable skills, he employed a wood carver from the centuries old and world renowned centre for sculpture in Benin in the south of the country. Mount became increasingly interested in sculpture himself and received a number of commissions for architectural works, including a large wall relief for the Swiss embassy in Ikoyi, Nigeria in 1960.

On his return to the UK in 1962 he set up home and studio in Cornwall near St Just where he remained for the rest of his life. He adopted metal, particularly stainless steel in later years, as the main material for his work, initially learning welding from a local blacksmith. The theme of sculpture as architectural embellishment continued to feature in much of his work with inspiration drawn from the landscape as well as from music.

Mount’s first exhibition in London in 1965 was followed by a regular pattern of gallery shows and public commissions in the UK, elsewhere in Europe and in America. Collections holding his work include the Harlow Art Trust, Plymouth Art Gallery, Exeter University, Bristol City Council, Cornwall County Council, Falmouth Art Gallery and the Department of the Environment.

The Architect
Wind Sculpture