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Widely regarded as the founding father of Caymanian contemporary art, Bendel Hydes recently concluded his fifty-year artistic journey with a career-defining exhibition at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (NGCI) in late 2019.  It was the largest solo project ever undertaken by the institution.

Initially designed as a moderate exhibition of Hydes’ recent works, plans for the showcase quickly grew into a fully comprehensive Retrospective when the NGCI team began documenting his personal collection in New York City. They discovered hundreds of artworks in storage dating as far back as the early 1980s, along with Hydes’ personal archive of sketchbooks, newspaper articles, and journals. Adding additional paintings from private collections to the exhibition roster, they ended up cataloguing and photographing over 400 artworks before shipping the collection back to Cayman in its entirety.

The four-month exhibition welcomed over 6,000 visitors and led to the first comprehensive academic study of the artists’ practice which resulted in a full colour catalogue tracing Hydes’ personal and artistic journey. Due to the support of NGCI Chairperson Susan A. Olde, OBE, who underwrote the catalogue, it was then gifted to schools and libraries across the Cayman Islands.

“The Bendel Hydes Retrospective was a remarkable project for all involved and a way of ensuring Hydes’ legacy as the forefather of Caymanian visual art,” says NGCI Director and Chief Curator Natalie Urquhart. “Yet it became very apparent during this process that despite Bendel being considered Cayman’s premier visual artist to date, his work was very underrepresented in the Cayman Islands National Art Collection.” This was due to several factors but primarily owing to budget restrictions for collecting artwork, as well as Bendel living and working in New York City since the early 1980s.

As Hydes’ has now stopped painting due to failing health, the collection and preservation of his work took on a new urgency. Following the closure of the larger Retrospective, NGCI reached out to Bendel and the Hydes family with the idea of creating a small exhibition to serve as the focus of a community-wide fundraising campaign designed to raise the necessary funds to secure the work in perpetuity. Together they selected key paintings from the artist’s own personal collection that traced each decade of his career including early work from the Tropical Plant Series of the 1980s; his move to Abstract Expressionism around 1990; the nautical mapping series of the mid-1990s; through to his experiments with, and ultimate mastering of, a style known as Luminescent Abstraction. Each of the ten paintings collectively represented the evolution of his studio practice from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Titled Bendel Hydes Acquisitions, the small showcase opened in January 2020. However, NGCI soon had to close their doors due to the pandemic, which put a halt to their plans. Due to the dramatic financial losses the Gallery then faced because of closure, it looked increasingly likely that they would lose the opportunity to secure the collection.

When NGCI Chairperson and Patron Mrs Olde, OBE, learned of the challenges NGCI was facing she stepped in to help mitigate the risk through a generous donation to the acquisition fund. “It is impossible to overstate the importance of Bendel Hydes within the history of Caymanian art,” says Mrs Olde, OBE. “He has provided inspiration to generations of Caymanian artists and paved the way for the thriving art scene which we enjoy today. Subsequently, it is vital that his work finds a safe home in the National Art Collection, where it can now be visited and studied by current and future generations.”

Several of the newly acquired artworks are already on display in the new National Gallery permanent collection exhibition Saltwater in Their Veins, and others will continue to rotate through the collection exhibition in coming months. “It is truly remarkable that we have been able to preserve and share Bendel Hydes’ legacy through Mrs Olde’s generosity and foresight,” says Urquhart. “We join her in welcoming back school students – as well as the wider community – to NGCI to share the remarkable story of Hydes’ life through these works.”

The National Gallery is open from Monday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM and admission is free. To book a school tour or for more information about educational resources relating to the collection please email education@nationalgallery.org.ky or for general information visit www.nationalgallery.org.ky .

The National Gallery continues to raise funds to secure additional artworks of national significance for the National Art Collection. If you would like to make a donation please email: director@nationalgallery.org.ky to discuss how you can contribute to collection preservation  and growth.