1924-2000 David Tinker was born in Charlton, south London, trained at Winchester and Bath Colleges of Art then in 1946, after four years in the Navy during the war, at the Slade School of Art. He first came to Wales in 1949 to take up a Lectureship in Sculpture at Cardiff College of Art. Tinker was a founder member of the 56 Group, a co-operative association formed by young exhibiting artists in Wales who were both advocates of modernism and allied to the international avant garde. Tinker moved to Aberystwyth to teach at the University of Wales in 1962. He was promoted to Director of the Visual Art Department (now the School of Art) in 1973, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.