Ian Hamilton Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas in 1925, a fact which he would later describe as ‘ridiculous, not in character at all’. His father was a bootlegger, smuggling rum to the USA during prohibition, and the young Finlay was sent back home to Scotland, aged six, to Larchfield, a boarding school in Helensburgh where the 24 year old poet WH Auden had recently joined the staff. Larchfield was followed by Dollar Academy and following a brief stint at Glasgow School of Art he found work as a shepherd and labourer in Perthshire and Orkney. Finlay started to write plays and poems in the 1950s and by the mid 1960s had emerged as one of the leaders of the concrete poetry movement. Over the next 40 years became he one of Scotland's most distinguished artists: a poet, philosopher and gardener whose work was frequently exhibited in the great museums of the world, despite Finlay himself rarely leaving the home in the Pentland Hills where he lived from 1966 until his death in 2006. He is probably best known for Little Sparta, the classical garden he built with his wife Sue in the midst of a bleak Scottish moor. Little Sparta is often, and deservedly, referred to as Scotland’s greatest C20th work of art and represents a fusion of so many of Finlay’s artistic ideas and principally his concern with man's relationship to nature. With the assistance of his many collaborators, Finlay translated his proposals into myriad different materials. From sculptures in stone and glass and neon, to postcards, prints and booklets, they are united in diversity by their place in Finlay's fundamentally poetic view of the world.
Ingleby Gallery works closely with Finlay's Estate and always holds a selection of work from the archive of his Wild Hawthorn Press in stock. For more information on Finlay's printed works please email the gallery. The garden at Little Sparta is open to the public from June to September and can discovered online via the Little Sparta website.
Ingleby looks forward to celebrating the centenary of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s birth this summer as part of FRAGMENTS, a series eight exhibitions curated by Pia Maria Simig being staged simultaneously in the galleries who worked closely with the artist during his lifetime. Our exhibition will open in May 2025 and will be accompanied by a new book of the same name.