The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have announced that a new exhibition exploring the Scottish designer and artist's celebrated, but difficult, career is to open next month in London. Mackintosh Architecture will be the first exhibition solely devoted to his architecture, offering the opportunity to view over sixty original drawings, watercolours and perspectives spanning the entirety of his working life. Seen together, they "reveal the evolution of his style from his early apprenticeship to his later projects as an individual architect and designer." Drawings on display will also show his collaboration with the accomplished artist and designer Margaret Macdonald, his wife.
From an early age, Mackintosh was an exceptional draughtsman. He became an architectural apprentice when he was aged only sixteen and, one year later, embarked on a decade of evening classes in art and design at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA), which he was to later redesign. This exhibition will feature Mackintosh’s original designs for the GSA, which he first prepared at the age of twenty nine. Models, photographs, and internal and external details also complement the drawings.
The exhibition puts in context the environment in which he was designing these projects: the city of Glasgow and the opportunities and clients he found there; his apprenticeship and early collaborative work as part of an architectural practice, to his work an independent architect and designer and the inspiration he drew from traditional Scottish baronial architecture.
Four contemporary artworks to complement the exhibition will also be shown, some of which respond directly to Mackintosh’s "masterpiece", the Glasgow School of Art. Others subtly evoke the artistic processes, techniques and style of Mackintosh.
Mackintosh Architecture will be open between the the 18th February and the 23rd May 2015 (10am–5pm, Monday to Saturday, and until 8pm every Tuesday) with free entrance.