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Unseen works by Alasdair Gray to go on display

The Estate of Alasdair Gray Poor Things (1992) by Alasdair Gray - it is a colourful but bizarre painting with a large man sitting on a fancy sofa, with a miniature man and woman cuddled into him, some half black-half white rabbits, a head with a cross-section of a brain and a skeleton. The Estate of Alasdair Gray
Poor Things (1992) by Alasdair Gray from Glasgow Life Museums' collection.

Art works by the artist and writer Alasdair Gray will go on display for the first time this weekend.

The works - given to Glasgow Life Museums a decade ago in memory of his wife - will go on display at Kelvingrove, the gallery he said inspired his love of art.

The nine creations - including the original art for his 1992 novel Poor Things which was made into a major feature film in 2023 - were given to Glasgow Museums in 2014 following the death of Gray's wife Morag.

The items were personal gifts for anniversaries and birthdays, and include portraits later transformed into characters and framed drawings for his own book covers and those he created for others.

PA Media Alasdair Gray, a grey-haired man with a grey beard and moustache, stares solemnly to the side, his left hand at his cheek, wearing a plain white t-shirt and thin-rimmed glasses.PA Media
Alasdair Gray was a prolific artist who died in 2019 at the age of 85.

They go on display in what would have been his 90th year.

Gray died in December 2019 at the age of 85. He was one of Scotland's most multi-talented artists.

Born in Riddrie, in the east of Glasgow, he was also a prolific poet, playwright, novelist, painter, and printmaker whose work continues to be celebrated in books, exhibitions, conferences, and the annual Gray Day on 25 February.

The Morag McAlpine Bequest enriches the existing Alasdair Gray collection held by Glasgow Life Museums, which includes the City Recorder series (1977–78), some of which can be viewed at the Gallery of Modern Art.

The new exhibition celebrates 10 years since the works were donated. The collection will be exhibited in the Fragile Art Gallery.

As well as the Poor Things artwork, the display will include the wrap-around jacket for Old Negatives, artwork in progress for the jacket design of Agnes Owens' People Like That, and A Working Mother.

The display offers insight into key aspects of Gray's artistic practice and explores how he reused imagery, and reimagined the influence of historical artworks in his own distinctive style.

The Estate of Alasdair Gray Four Folk in Glasgow Publishing 1977 shows drawings of four characters in beige tones, with names and descriptions of them written in cursive above their heads.The Estate of Alasdair Gray
Four Folk in Glasgow Publishing 1977 depicts Simon Berry and Bill McLellan, Glasgow Publishers, Jim Taylor, Australian Writer and Printer and Shelley Killen, an American artist

Katie Bruce, producer curator with Glasgow Life, said: "Alasdair Gray showed great generosity when he gifted The Morag McAlpine Bequest to the city, following the ing of his wife.

"These personal gifts for anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmas, include portraits later transformed into characters in his work and framed drawings for book covers and dust jackets, both for his own publications and those of fellow writers.

"It is fitting and wonderful to display this collection in a place that meant so much to Gray, and to offer audiences a deeper understanding of his innovative practice and extraordinary talent."

Visitors to Kelvingrove Museum can also see Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties, which shows life in an area of Glasgow where the landscape and community radically changed post-war.

Painted in 1964, it is one of Gray's best-known works and what he referred to as "my best big oil painting".

It represents a significant example of his painting within the decade following his graduation from Glasgow School of Art in 1957.