MADDOX, Conroy (Ronald) 1912-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born December 27, 1912, in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England; died January 14, 2005, in London, England. Artist and author. Maddox was a prominent surrealist painter. He attended Oxford University in 1929, but the Great Depression forced him to move his young family to Chipping Norton, where he managed a hotel. Interested in art since he was a boy, he painted landscapes whenever he was not working. During the early 1930s he went on to work various other jobs, including as a clerk, a laboratory assistant, and a designer of trade show exhibits. In the late 1930s, Maddox discovered surrealism, and this led him to completely change his art. He traveled to Paris several times to work with fellow Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dali, but such trips ended when Germany invaded France at the start of World War II. For the duration, he worked for the company Turner Brothers in Birmingham, England, while also organizing Surrealist exhibitions. During the war Maddox emerged as a controversial artist whose pieces sometimes deliberately shocked audiences with their suggestions of unsavory violence or eroticism. After the war, Maddox, who considered surrealism an outward expression of intellectual freedom, lectured at the University of Birmingham until 1957. He also was co-organizer of the Exeter Surrealist Festival. Although in the 1950s and 1960s Maddox's art showed some influence from the pop art school, by the 1970s he had rededicated himself to surrealism. He published several books, in addition to his prodigious output of paintings, including Dali (1979), The Surrealist Movement in England (1981), and Conroy Maddox: Surreal Enigmas (1995).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), January 19, 2005, p. 27.

Independent (London, England), January 15, 2005, p. 56.

Times (London, England), January 17, 2005, p. 50.