Kurt Rowland's Visual Education: A Quiet Force in Post-War Art Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper introduces the life and work of art educator and designer Kurt Rowland (1920–1980) who authored the first set of textbooks on visual education and played a role in the shifting world of art and design education in post-war Britian. We detail the foundational experiences of his extraordinary life in the first half of the 20th century including surviving the Spanish Civil War and La Retirada, being a ‘friendly enemy alien’, and becoming one of the Dunera boys forced into Australian internment camps. He later went on to develop a new aspect of art and design education he called visual education. We explore Rowland's notion of a visual education, explicating its features, appraising its import, and situating Rowland's ideas to those of his contemporaries. We explore his motivations and how his work advanced art pedagogy. Finally, we argue that Kurt Rowland has been absent in recent literature on art and design education and that his work, which contains elements that have continued relevance today, should not be overlooked.