Lys Hansen: A Retrospective

Lys Hansen has a major retrospective opening at Perth Art Gallery on 27 November 2026, and it's a big one: over 35 works, including large-scale paintings and several sculptures, running through to 23 December 2027. The show marks her 90th birthday year, and it's the first time the gallery has devoted a whole exhibition to a living female artist since 2017.

Among the pieces is The Brave and the Fallen (2026), a new work created specifically for this show, alongside How Wisdom and Folly Meet, Mix and Unite, How Virtue and Vice Blend Their Black and Their White (1987), which is held by Culture Perth & Kinross. Together they span nearly four decades of her practice.

Hansen is widely regarded as one of Scotland's most important figurative expressionists, and she's spent more than sixty years making paintings and sculptures that explore memory, identity, conflict and human relationships, mixing personal experience with reflections on major historical events. She was born in Falkirk in 1936 and grew up during the war, with her father on the convoys to Russia and her mother a town baker in Alloa. She attended Craigmount School at Scone Palace and took dance lessons from the artist and choreographer Margaret Morris, whose own work and belongings are also on display at the gallery.

Her career has taken her across Europe, including France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, and she's worked in Berlin since 1985, where she was present when the Wall fell in 1989. She lives in Stirlingshire now. The retrospective runs from 27 November 2026 to 23 December 2027 at Perth Art Gallery, 78 George Street, PH1 5LB. Tickets are £9 for adults and £7 for concessions — disabled people, the unwaged, students and those in receipt of Universal or Pension Credit — and free for Culture Perth and Kinross Supporters and under 18s.