My brother-in-law, Philip Hartigan, who has died of a heart attack aged 67, was one of the pioneer street mural artists working in London from the swinging 60s through to the 1980s.
He always knew that he needed to live the life of an artist but, as he later said: “I didn’t like what art school did to my friends.” So he left his home in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, after his A-levels, and got his first real chance to learn and practise art through the English psychedelic artist David Vaughan. This formative experience, as an apprentice for Vaughan and fellow muralists Dudley Edwards and Douglas Binder in their design team BEV, taught him how to create murals, posters and exhibitions.
At the Roundhouse, north London, in July 1971, to accompany Andy Warhol’s play Pork, Philip opened his art show Second Resurrection, a Free Concert of Paintings. He recalled painting a large pound sign in bright colours on the roof of the Roundhouse before being shown the door by the police. He always thought that money could corrupt art and socially orientated inclusive art was what he wanted to practise.
His first solo commission came in 1971 when he got permission from British Rail to paint the railway bridge at Primrose Hill station in north London. An article in the Design Journal (1972) described the mural as “Pavement artistry: Camden style”, replacing “a drear and grimy structure scrawled with outworn slogans … with a series of cheerful scenes”. More murals followed and Philip set up his own group of muralists, the Fine Heart Squad, with Tony King and Peter Carey, finding funding from local councils and the Arts Council. Anyone could join in and help make art. Passers-by took up paintbrushes, ex-offenders learned new skills and young Chilean refugee artists found comfort in their exile through painting the streets.
Philip hoped the murals would show that people could improve their environment. “The idea was to inspire the community to action, but we didn’t realise that it would have such a permanence.” The mural at Primrose Hill station is still in place today.
Philip was based in France from the mid-1980s and worked in art therapy, occasionally contributing to articles to the punk newspaper New York Waste.
He is survived by his second wife, Charlotte, and their children, Christophe, Winnie and Edouard; by Paradise and Patrick, the children of his first marriage, which ended in divorce; and by his sister, Margaret.
.jpg?w=600)
