William Green

William Green (1934 – 28 January 2001), was an artist who achieved attention in the late 1950s as a practitioner of Action painting. His work became known following a documentary film featuring his creation paintings by riding a bicycle over a surface saturated with bitumen. From about 1965, Green withdrew from the art scene as a reaction to negative publicity. He resumed his work in 1995. One of his works is in Tate Modern. Early life William Green was born in Greenwich, London, in 1934. After leaving school he worked in the drawing office of an architect in Sidcup, Kent. He then studied at Sidcup School of Art from 1952 to 1954, and there he made his first use of bitumen paint after discovering an old tin in his garden shed. Green was accepted for the RCA in 1954, but as a conscientious objector to National Service, he was imprisoned from January 1955 for three months so was unable to join immediately. At the RCA, Green was in John Minton's tutorial group, and influenced by Expressionism.