Euan Uglow review No wonder Cherie Blair didn't model for long, these pictures are exhausting just to look at

"Euan Uglow, they say, is an artist's artist, and therein lies the problem. If you were approaching his painstaking canvases out of curiosity how to construct the figure, capture precise perspective, proportions I can see how their visible workings (complex little dashes and crosses and plumb lines and geometric grids) would prove revelatory. But lots of us come to art to be inspired, transported, to feel. And for all their technical prowess, Uglow's 70-odd regimented paintings at MK Gallery leave me cold."

"First, some context, which we get immediately upon entering in a slightly maddening move, the five-room retrospective of the artist opens with a room of seven paintings, of which only two are by him. After studying at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London from 1948 to 1950, he moved to the Slade. He was influenced by Paul Cezanne and Alberto Giacometti, as well as three tutors, all of whom are represented here."

"I'm warming to him until I come face to face with the first of a series of large-scale nudes, this one spliced and diced in a way that makes me think of a meat cleaver. Which is bizarre, really, because there's nothing meaty about Uglow's naked women, a world apart from his more popular London contemporaries Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud."

Euan Uglow's retrospective at MK Gallery presents roughly 70 regimented paintings across five rooms. The show opens oddly with seven paintings of which only two are by Uglow. He trained at Camberwell and the Slade and absorbed influences from Paul Cezanne, Alberto Giacometti and three tutors. From 1959 he worked in a Battersea studio and developed painstaking, measurement-driven paintings featuring visible dashes, crosses, plumb lines and grids. Early works contain flashes of life—plump beads and vibrant portraits such as Marigold—yet many viewers find the overall series technically impressive but emotionally cold; large-scale nudes feel spliced and diced, distinct from contemporaries like Auerbach, Bacon and Freud.

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