Beyond Time: William Turnbull TV - BBC online - Guardian obituary -
He decided to remain in London and pursue his quest to become an artist. Beyond Time: William Turnbull, BBC 2013
He had his first one-man show at the Hanover Gallery in 1950. ibid.
Turnbull was drawn to the abstract expressionist movement gathering momentum in New York. ibid.
He began working in steel ... fibreglass and Perspex. ibid.
b Dundee, 11 Jan 1922. British sculptor and painter. After serving as an RAF pilot in the Second World War he studied at the Slade School, 1946–8, then in 1948–50 lived in Paris, where he saw a good deal of his fellow Scot and Slade student Paolozzi and met such illustrious figures as Brancusi and Giacometti. As a sculptor Turnbull moved from Surrealistic and primitivist works to painted steel geometrical constructions in the manner of Caro. As a painter he was one of the first British artists to work in a style similar to that of the American Colour Field Painters. BBC online
The career of the artist William Turnbull, who has died aged 90, practically constituted a history of 20th-century sculpture. From Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti to Anthony Caro and David Smith, from the typical modernist immersion in tribal art and idols to minimalism, he experienced and expressed it all, yet he absorbed the influences and remade them, so that the work he produced could never be mistaken for anything but his. He was one of the most authoritative, expressive and subtle artists of his generation. Guardian obituary 18th November 2012