Laetitia Yhap
02 - 05 September, 2022 
Frieze Seoul 2022 | Seoul 
Booth F2

Laetitia Yhap (b.1941) is a British painter living in Hastings, Sussex, well-known for her meticulous and bold depiction of the everyday life of fishermen on the fishing coast in Hastings, East England. Graduated from Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1962 and supported by the Leverhulme Research Scholarship, she travelled to Italy for a year in 1962, looking at Renaissance art and architecture before returning to Slade School of Fine Art to do a postgraduate degree from 1963 to 1965. Since 1967, she settled in Hastings and started her most famous series, a series of paintings with irregular shapes that record the everyday life of fishermen along the coastline. Immersing herself in the maritime world day in day out, her works are the tableau vivant that celebrate the fishing tradition of East Hastings, while her unique artistic style marks Yhap’s unparalleled importance in British art history. As the curator and art historian of the Tate Gallery, Richard Morphet, wrote, ‘celebrating both the compulsion of observation and the complex reality  of existence, each of these images opens a world and makes it permanently fresh.’



Laetitia Yhap has exhibited extensively in several institutions such as Hayward Gallery (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Serpentine Gallery (London), Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool). Solo exhibitions include: Summer Show 1, Serpentine Gallery (London, 1979), Laetitia Yhap: Fishing Paintings, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery (Hastings, 1984), Laetitia Yhap: The Business of the Beach, Camden Art Centre (London, 1988 – 89); Shoreline, Riviera Gallery (Hastings, 1991), Laetitia Yhap: Elements 1963 – 1974, Stormont Studios (Rye, 1991), My Vital Life, Laetitia Yhap at 80, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery (Hastings, 2020), Laetitia Yhap: Longings and Belonging, Yanlan Arts and Culture Foundation (Beijing, 2022). Her works are in the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery, the British Council, Contemporary Art Society, Nueld Society, and the New Hall Art Collection at University of Cambridge.