Jepps Malcolm

Malcolm Jepps

 

Born in August 1932, Jepps joined the YCL in February 1950. He studied at Stratford and

St. Martin's Schools of Art until 1951 and after training began work as a commercial artist.

 

He died, at the startlingly young age of 21 years, on October 11th 1953. The Communist Party Artists Group at the time considered the tragedy to be doubly aggravated since it had little doubt that, had he lived, Jepps would have become an important British artist in the socialist realist school.

 

Although he wasn’t much known outside of the YCL, an exhibition of his work was held at Holborn Hill art gallery to commemorate the first anniversary of his death.

 

It was said that there was “no slickness about his work – everything he did, the art school studies, the few paintings and drawings of people in the street or the underground, the commercial designs and the stream of decorations, posters, and backcloths for the YCL (such as "Cut the Call Up"), showed that he had to sweat and struggle to get his ideas into a visual form”. The work had great vigour … he obviously went at the job with great gusto (working fast with rapid brush strokes.

 

Source: CP Artists group bulletin 1954