Sybil Atteck: A Lost Legacy Rediscovered

This lecture introduces the work of Sybil Atteck (19111975) and her pioneering role in the history of modern art in Trinidad and Tobago, the broader Caribbean, and as a founding member of the Trinidad Art Society in 1943. Her role, as a woman artist, in the development of Trinidadian art has been compared to that of Edna Manley in Jamaica, her contemporary. Atteck’s art education includes the London Polytechnic Institute in 1935, the Escuela de Bellas Artes del Perú in 1942, and Washington University in St. Louis Missouri USA in 1948, where she received her BFA Degree. With an extensive record of local and international exhibitions, Atteck’s reach included the Exhibition of West Indian Painting shown in Jamaica and Canada in 1945-46, the Royal Academy of Art in 1955, as well as a solo exhibition at the Institute of Jamaica in 1959. More recently, her work has been presented in Circles and Circuits (2018) in Los Angeles, Fragments of Epic Memory (2021) at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada, and MAS ALLA, EL MAR CANTA (Beyond, the Sea Sings) Diasporic Intimacies and Labor (2021) at the Times Art Centre in Berlin, Germany. Despite Atteck’s significant accomplishments, and the general recognition given to her role in the development of Trinidadian art, her life and work has been scarcely documented and the breadth and range of her artistic contributions is still insufficiently known. The Sybil Atteck Biography Project, which was initiated by her nephew Keith Atteck in 2018, has sought to address this gap in the Caribbean’s art-historical scholarship. This lecture is based on this archival research and makes a case for Atteck’s significance and unique place in the history and development of modern art in the British Caribbean during the period of decolonisation. Key works will be shown and discussed.