Back in April, I wrote about a trip to Liverpool and my discovery of the work of the brilliant sculptor William Mitchell.
Well, as I suggested at the end of that post, I haven’t been able to get his powerful work out of my head, and after some rooting around the internet and a couple of email responses to my earlier post, one to my utter amazement from the artist himself, and another advising that a piece of his work had recently been reinstalled into Kirkby Library in Liverpool, I’ve decided to write another, more detailed and dedicated post on one of our most underrated and unsung post-war sculptors.
William George Mitchell was born in London’s Maida Vale in 1925. After a childhood plagued by illness and missed schooling, he was apprenticed to a local firm of decorators, where he began to learn about materials and craft. The advent of WWII resulted in a stint in the Royal Navy after which he ended up working for the NAAFI (effectively the catering and retail arm of the Armed Forces) where he was responsible for creating painted murals and panoramas on the walls of refurbished club and canteen buildings, at many sites across the globe.
