Meet The Artist
This is largely due to the artist’s time involved in the world of professional
football – he being a former director of the great Manchester United Football Club (1989-1992), and, the one time owner/chairman of Carlisle United Football Club ( 1992-2002).And, yet, this well-known public figure has been a visual artist all of his adult life and an exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Knighton first shot to fame in the art world more than 15 years ago under the pseudonym,Kongthin Pearlmich when his iconic corpus christi triptych piece , ‘Hand Of God, Foot Of Man, Heart Of Eternal Life’, was exhibited in Kings College Chapel, Kings College, Cambridge University in 2008.
The work caused a sensation in the art world and attracted national and international attention. The then BBC Arts Correspondent, Razia Iqbal, made a determined effort to track down the artist to unmask them but Knighton avoided being unmasked as the artist who created the work for a further decade. Knighton was finally revealed as the artist behind the KP name in a book published in 2019, written by Cambridge historian Phillip Vine, entitled, ‘Visionary’, a book about Manchester United FC and Michael Knighton’s influence on the club’s all round commercial development, which was transformed from a failing business (on a commercial basis) to becoming the biggest sporting brand in the world with a market value today of upwards of £7.2billion pounds.
Football Life
Michael Knighton was a board director of Manchester United from 1989-1992.
Artist?
Knighton has been an artist all of his adult life and has studied the great masters since histeenage years. His work has been greatly influenced by the 1940’s-1950’s, New York School of abstract expressionist painters as well as Sir Howard Hodgkin, Sir Terry Frost , John Hoyland, Reginald J Lloyd, etc.
Knighton was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, Summer Exhibition
2022
