Lionel Wendt

Lionel Wendt (1900-1944)

Lionel Wendt was born in Colombo, Ceylon on December 3, 1900. Educated in Colombo and Cambridge (he studied Law). He also studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. On returning in 1924 he practiced law for a short time , but then devoted himself to his enormous talents as a musician till 1935 when he turned to what became his true and obsessive métier, photography. He had a one-man show in London in 1938 . He died in Colombo on December 19, 1944.

A fellow photographer destroyed all his negatives some time after he had died, on the ground that this was an accepted practice in photographic circles ('the negative is the score; the print the performance', -Ansel Adams-). All photographs we do have in stock are vintage (toned) silver prints from the period 1934 – 1944. Very few of his prints are signed but all are stamped with a Certificate of Authenticity by Gallery Ton Peek.

Selection of Exhibitions between 1934 and 2007

1934 -1944 In Ceylon, Art gallery Colombo, USA, Asia and England, Camera club London

1959 Colombo during the opening of the Lionel Wendt Memorial art Centre

1970 Town Hall Colombo

1994 Art Centre LW in Colombo in corporation with the Deutsche Bank

1998 Paris Photo Fair presented by Ton Peek Gallery

1999 Paris Photo Fair presented by Ton Peek Gallery

1999 Paradise Road Gallery in Colombo

1999 Lionel Wendt Photographs “One man show” Ton Peek Gallery Utrecht

2000 Harold Peiris Art Gallery (Lionel Wendt Memorial Art Centre)

2003 Fukuoka Asian Art Museum