(1914 - 2009)
Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) was born in china and her family returned to Scotland soon after her birth. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art, where she was taught by SJ Peploe and WG Gillies, and learnt alongside Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and William Gear. In 1933, she went to Paris to study under André Lhote, followed by another visit in 1937. In between, in 1936, she met Adrian Stokes; the couple married in 1938. She studied for a time at the Euston Road School, before fleeing with Stokes to Cornwall following the outbreak of war, arguably heralding the next wave of artists to the area, with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Naum Gabo, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, and Roger Hilton.
This move to St Ives coincided with Mellis exploring collage and relief. Created from found materials and paper, these collages were exhibited in New Movements in Art, at the London Museum in 1942. In 1946, following her divorce from Stokes, Mellis met the artist Francis Davison, with whom she moved to London, and then to Cap d’Antibes, in 1947. They married in 1948, and relocated to Walberswick, and later Syleham, Norfolk, in 1950, and then to Suffolk.
Mellis was part of the Tate St Ives' inaugural exhibition in 1993, and was the subject of a retrospective that opened at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, and toured the UK, in 1997. Exhibitions include Modern Scottish Women 1885-1965, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and a joint-show with Damien Hirst at Pier Arts Centre, Orkney. In 2018, her work featured in an exhibition inspired by Virginia Woolf and her writings, at Tate St Ives.
