New LS Lowry exhibition aims to demolish the ‘naive and uncultured’ myth L. S. Lowry

A new exhibition of LS Lowry’s work will “debunk some of the myths” about the Mancunian artist, who the exhibition’s co-curator says is still wrongly ridiculed for being “naive and uncultured”.

L. S. Lowry: Theater of Life features 140 paintings by the artist, who depicted working-class life in the industrial northwest of England during the early and mid-20th century.

A 1948 Guardian review described him as “direct, unassuming and refreshingly honest,” but the abstract nature of his paintings has led to misinterpretations of his work, according to one of the curators of the exhibition, which opened on October 24.

“What we hope to do is actually debunk some of the myths,” says Anthony Spira, director of the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. “He was not just an industrial painter. He was certainly not naïve, isolated or self-taught; he had spent many years in art college.

“He went to opera, theater and cinema. He collected art too, with the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, Jacob Epstein and Lucian Freud. He was more cultured and engaged than he is given credit for.”

The exhibition includes a rare 1932 painting titled “Football Match,” which depicts a match between two unknown teams. This will be the first time the painting has been seen in public in nearly 85 years, and was last displayed at the Royal Academy a decade after it was painted.

Lowry, who was a Manchester City fan, painted his favorite team playing against Sheffield United in 1938, but it was unusual for him to depict an actual event rather than a piece made up of several scenes combined.

“This may have been an event he witnessed,” Spira says. “It’s probably an amateur game… Most of his scenes are more about the crowds than the actual sports.”

Earlier this year, LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes gave viewers an insight into the artist’s inner workings through rediscovered interviews, lip-synced by Sir Ian McKellen playing Lowry.

The BBC film was based on interviews conducted in 1972 by a young woman called Angela Barratt, who approached the artist and asked if she could interview him. When she died in 2022, her son discovered the tapes. The Guardian described the talks as “tender, revealing and very moving.”

McKellen criticized Tate in 2011 for not paying enough attention to Laurie. Two years later, Lowry had a show at Tate Britain featuring 90 of his works, which focused mostly on his industrial scenes of workers and factories.

Those works, such as “School Going Out” and “The Pond,” are part of Lurie’s signature style that – if presented separately – can morph into a “negative caricature” of his production, Spira said.

“He actually did a lot more than that,” Spira says of the industrial action scenes. “He had a lot of leisure time, not just people going to football matches, but also beaches, festivals and people having fun and having fun – classic English social life.”

His most famous painting, Going to the Match, was purchased for £7.8 million in 2022 by the Lowry Arts Center in Salford, saving it from disappearing into a private collection.

The exhibition at MK Gallery is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of his death. Lowry died just a few months before a major retrospective opened at the Royal Academy.