1918-1964. Peter Lanyon was born in St. Ives, Cornwall in 1918. He studied briefly at the Penzance School of Art and at the Euston Road School before returning to St. Ives where he met Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, both of whom exerted significant influence. Lanyon's most successful paintings were manifestations of his personal confrontation with the natural elements. By the 1950s he began to concentrate on painting 'portraits' of place in which he emphasized the sensation of viewing landscape from several vantage points. In 1959, seeking alternatives to conventional perspectives, he took up gliding. He remained a lifelong inhabitant of Cornwall but travelled extensively in America and in Europe and had a series of successful one-man shows at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York between 1957 and 1964. At the time of his tragic death in 1964 (the result of a gliding accident) he was the most widely exhibited and well-known British artist in America.