Glen Baxter, the British surrealist artist who combined a love of old movies (particularly classic American Westerns), art history, adventure stories, English boy's schools, quirky relatives, and food (particularly cheeses) with absurdist humor died on March 29, 2026 at the age of 82.
Widely exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, Glen Baxter's first solo exhibition was held at the Gotham Book Mart and Gallery in the mid 1970's. As part of an email exchange with Mr. Baxter a few years ago, the artist sent me this scan of a photo taken at his Gotham Book Mart opening with Edward Gorey. Mr. Gorey was so taken with his works that he purchased ten pieces of art at the show.
Artwork shown is in my personal collection
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3 comments:
Thanks for bringing this forward.
How great to have had some correspondence with him. For some reason, this post never showed up in my reader. At least you and I, if not The New York Times, noticed GB’s departure.
I bumped into Glen a number of times at different events here in London. We talked about Gorey, and much else. He was a lovely soul, with an excellent twinkle in his eye and will be missed. What I love about the obituaries is that they have underlined that he was much more than a cartoonist with an absurd sense of humour - that he should be viewed as very much part of the Absurdist school of art. But, of course, there remains an unfathomable snobbishness in this country that views both humour and illustration as very minor art forms, if art forms at all. Yet Britain has produced some of great artists that have shaped and excelled at both. Ronald Searle was so dissatisfied at the approach in this country that he gave his entire archive to a German institution. Fortunately Quentin Blake has worked tireless to address this and his Centre of Illustration is about to open but still, having worked at Tate, I know that some of these opinions are, very sadly, deeply entrenched.
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