- Artist’s remaining collection to help support future generations of Sri Lankan artists through The Beven Foundation
Some artistic legacies are preserved through archives, retrospectives, and collections. Others continue by creating opportunities for the artists who come after them.
For Sri Lankan artist George Beven, who died in 2023 after a career spanning seven decades, the latter now forms an important part of how his legacy will live on. The Beven Foundation, established recently, brings together his remaining body of work with a mandate to turn the collection into meaningful support for artists across Sri Lanka.
Directed by Ian Wattie and Graeme Thomas Laurie, the foundation was formally introduced through its inaugural exhibition, ‘The Evolution of an Artist,’ held at Barefoot Gallery Colombo earlier this month.
The exhibition looked across Beven’s long and varied career, presenting an artist whose practice moved between visual art, design, fashion, and journalism, and whose relationship with Sri Lanka endured despite spending much of his life between the island and London.
For Wattie and Laurie, who became friends with Beven and his partner Wolfgang Stange after moving to Sri Lanka in 2019, the foundation is ultimately about carrying out a wish left behind by the couple.
A legacy with a purpose
“The idea for the foundation emerged during discussions about what should be done under the will about the property, artworks, and legacy of George Beven. The central wish in the will is to generate funds from the sale of Beven’s remaining artwork, which are to be used for the benefit of artists in Sri Lanka,” they told The Sunday Morning Brunch.
Wattie and Laurie had already played a role in helping Beven and Stange put their legal affairs in order. Following Stange’s death in December 2024, they became custodians of Beven’s remaining artworks, with responsibility for using the proceeds from their sale to support Sri Lankan artists.
The foundation has consequently been established around three objectives: preserving Beven’s memory and contribution to Sri Lankan art, creating opportunities for collectors to acquire works from the remaining collection, and distributing the proceeds through an equitable and inclusive process which benefits artists and their communities.
Supporting artists across Sri Lanka
While supporting emerging artists is one possible outcome of the foundation’s work, its mandate is deliberately broader.
“The mission of The Beven Foundation is to support ‘artists in Sri Lanka’. These are the exact words from the will,” Wattie and Laurie explained. “They reflect a commitment to support all kinds of artists, islandwide, and at every stage of their career.”
The first step will be the sale of works presented through the inaugural exhibition. Rather than immediately determining how the resulting funds should be distributed, the foundation plans to begin by listening.
“With these funds, the foundation will set up focus groups with artists across the island to identify unmet needs in the communities. From there, a fair, equitable, and inclusive programme of support will be developed.”
Importantly, they stressed that the eventual structure would be shaped locally. “All decisions will be taken by Sri Lankans for Sri Lankans.”
This approach gives the foundation room to respond to what artists themselves identify as gaps within Sri Lanka’s creative landscape, rather than beginning with a predetermined model of support.
An artist in constant evolution
The foundation’s launch also provided an opportunity to look again at Beven himself.
Born in Negombo in 1929, Beven trained in Colombo before studying at Central Saint Martins in London from 1955 to 1956. He relocated permanently to London in 1958, although Sri Lanka continued to occupy a central place within his artistic world.
For Wattie and Laurie, understanding Beven means resisting the temptation to define him through one discipline.
“George Beven was not just one kind of artist. He was a dancer, a journalist, and a fashion editor as well as being a visual artist. His legacy stands as someone who evolved continuously through his career. He explored and reimagined the world around him countless times.”
‘The Evolution of an Artist’ reflected this breadth. Alongside Beven’s artworks, the launch incorporated his relationship with fashion, an important element of his early career. While working at the Ceylon Observer, Beven produced fashion illustrations for its women’s pages, which eventually led him towards fashion design.
For the foundation’s launch, designer Arsath Furkhan created three garments inspired by Beven’s art and fashion illustrations, bringing another dimension of his practice into the present.
Reconsidering George Beven
There is also a larger ambition behind the foundation: encouraging a renewed examination of Beven’s place within Sri Lankan art.
“Beven’s contribution to the art world is overdue a re-evaluation as to its impact,” Wattie and Laurie said. “He may have spent a lot of time abroad, as so many Sri Lankan artists have done, but his heart and soul were always here in Sri Lanka.”
His relative modesty, they feel, partly explains why the full scope of his work has not always received corresponding attention.
“He was a quiet, modest man who painted for himself and as a result made little effort to showcase the breadth and depth of his artistry. It is wonderful that the Sri Lankan art world, and indeed further afield, is now waking up to his talent.”
The foundation therefore begins with two connected ideas. One looks backwards, preserving and reassessing an artist whose work crossed disciplines, countries, and decades. The other looks firmly towards what comes next.
“His legacy is diverse and cuts across so many art forms,” Wattie and Laurie said. “It will endure and have a deep impact on the future generations of artists in Sri Lanka.”
Through the Beven Fund, that legacy now has the opportunity to become something tangible: support for other artists to develop, experiment, and find the same freedom of creative expression that defined Beven’s own career.