John Wragg (1937–2020)

Sculptor, painter and teacher, born in York, 20 October 1937. His father was Arthur Wragg, an accountant with the British Sugar Company, his mother Ethel, née Ransome, a dressmaker. He studied at York School of Art, 1953–56, and the Royal College of Art, 1956–60, and taught at Chelsea School of Art, 1961–90. In 1960 he won the Sainsbury Award for Sculpture and in 1966 the Sainsbury Sculpture Competition, with Embrace, a 3.2-metre-high abstract sculpture in cast aluminium which was erected in the shopping precinct outside the Sainsbury store in King’s Road, Chelsea; following the demolition of the precinct, the sculpture was relocated, firstly to the Milton Keynes branch of Sainsbury’s and finally to the city’s Grafton Park. Wragg won an Arts Council Major Award in 1977, and in 1981 his Head of Rainer Maria Rilke (resin; exh. Royal Academy, 1980) was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest which presented it to the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool. He had his first solo exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London, 1963 (also 1966 and 1970). Other solo exhibitions include Galerie Alexandre Iolas, Paris, 1968; Bridge Street Gallery, Bath, 1982; Quinton Green Fine Art, London, 1985; and England & Co, London, 1994. Important group exhibitions in which he participated include the Open Air Sculpture Exhibition, Battersea Park, London, 1966; Pittsburgh International, United States of America, 1967; Biennale di Scultura di Arese, Milan, 1980; and ‘British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century’, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1981–82. His longest association, however, was with the Royal Academy of Arts, exhibiting there from 1980 until his death, submitting multiple works per year, to begin with, mostly sculpture – variously, in resin, bronze, wood and Jesmonite – but from 2008 acrylic paintings only. He was elected an Associate Royal Academician in 1983, a full RA in 1991 (showing his diploma work, a bronze sculpture entitled Bird Rising in the following year’s exhibition) and a Senior RA in 2013. From 1996, he was also a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Wragg lived and worked in Devizes, Wiltshire, from about 1980. He died on 26 May 2020 and was survived by a son, Julian, from his marriage (dissolved) to Valerie McCready. Public collections holding his work include the Arts Council of Great Britain (Man Against a Wall, bronze, 1959; Trophy, aluminium, 1963; and Ibis, aluminium, 1965); the Contemporary Art Society; the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (13 paintings, drawings and sculptures, including the maquette for Embrace, 1966); the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Untitled, aluminium over wood, 1964); and the Tate (Funeral Group, metal, 1963, and Opus, aluminium, 1965).

Bibliography: D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945 (2 vols: A–L, M–Z), Bristol, 2006; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 473; S. Nairne and N. Serota (eds), British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century (Whitechapel Art Gallery exh. cat.), London, 1981, pp. 188, 263; A. Philips, ‘John Wragg RA, who made his home in Devizes, dies after outstanding career’ (11 June 2020), Wiltshire Gazette and Herald (online edn); Royal Academy of Arts website: ‘John Wragg RA (1937 – 2020)’; Sainsbury Centre: ‘Embrace (Maquette)’; The Telegraph (online edn): ‘Telegraph Obituaries – John Wragg’ (23 August 2020)’; Who Was Who (online edn), 2020.

Terry Cavanagh, June 2025