Alan Gouk obituary

Alan Gouk, who has died from cancer aged 84, was an ambitious abstract painter and an eloquent and passionate writer, committed to the continuing power of modernism. For many years he taught sculpture at St Martin’s School of Art (now Central Saint Martins, part of the University of the Arts London). He was primarily influenced by American abstract expressionism, although became conscious of the European basis of his art – his personal lodestars were the painters Henri Matisse, Hans