Barbara Sansoni

Barbara Sansoni is Sri Lanka’s most celebrated living nonagenarian artist, designer and conservationist. She was born in Kandy, and educated in Ceylon and South India. Her intense love of colour is inspired by the vibrant colours of South Asia that has provided her with a lifetime’s worth of inspiration for painting and fabric design. Barbara set up her design studio and weaving workshop in 1958 and began designing cloth in the early 1960’s. In 1964, she was invited to design for women learning to weave in a convent workshop north of Colombo leading to the establishment of her signature textile brand, Barefoot.

Barbara Sansoni was awarded the Rockefeller travel grant in 1970. She used the grant to travel to fourteen countries in just two years to study textiles and wooden buildings. Subsequently, she set up several weaving centres in Sri Lanka training and employing local people to realise her designs. Her achievements have been recognised by the Zonta Woman of Achievement Award (1987), the Kala Suri Award from the President of Sri Lanka (2005), and the Geoffrey Bawa Award for contributions to architecture (2011). Barbara Sansoni’s first solo exhibition was in London in 1966 and since then she has continued to show her hand-woven textiles, drawings and paintings by participating in numerous exhibitions across Asia, Europe and North America. Barbara Sansoni co-authored Geoffrey Bawa with Brian Brace Taylor and Geoffrey Bawa (1996) and is the author of Vihares and Verandas Ceylon (1978).

For Tonight No Poetry Will Serve Barbara offers a selection of prints from her seminal series Vihares and Verandas (1978) featuring visages of the fast-disappearing colonial architecture of the Island of Sri Lanka.

Barbara Sansoni was awarded Honorary Doctor of Philosophy for the distinguished service rendered to the field of visual arts from the University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Sri Lanka (2016). She divides her time between her work and homes in Cambridge, UK, and Colombo, Sri Lanka.