Barbie Antonis at Lauderdale with her husband’s famous works

AN exhibition celebrating the man who “designed half your record collection” has opened at Lauderdale House in Highgate.

Storm Thorgerson created many of the most evocative and emblematic album cover designs of the second half of the 20th century, working with a huge range of artists from Pink Floyd to Ian Dury and Led Zeppelin – among many more.

He is known for his ­surrealist designs: for the band Phish, he photo­graphed a man attempting to outrun a vast, unravelling ball of wool; for 10cc, Mr Thorgerson placed a sheep on a psychoanalytic couch; and for Alan Parsons, he had a group of people hanging upside down from bungee jump cords.

His artwork for the Pink Floyd album – a design made up of a prism refracting a single beam of light into a spectrum of colour – has become a seminal reference point in pop culture.

The show has been curated by his wife Barbie Antonis, who lived with Mr Thorgerson in their West Hampstead home until his death in 2013.

She decided the “best way” to mark the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death was with an exhibition at Lauderdale House, where the couple were married and Mr Thorgerson’s funeral was held.

Biffy Clyro’s Only Revolutions

“Ten years is quite a long time. When you lose someone, you never really lose them – they’re always in your heart, they’re always in your mind,” Ms Antonis said.

She has selected 30 works from her private collection to display later this month.

“There are many, many prints, including the most famous [ones] that I don’t have – Storm gave away a lot of our prints,” she said.

Mr Thorgerson, who had a studio in Belsize Park, “couldn’t draw at all”, Ms Antonis said – but he “generated a huge number of ideas that resulted in incredible imagery”.

He worked collaboratively throughout his life, firstly with graphic designer Aubrey Powell at their art group Hipgnosis, and later with a group of artists at the design company StormStudios.

“Storm and his team only did images for real,” Ms Antonis said.

Many of the images that look computer generated are really straightforward photographs: one example is the cover for Biffy Clyro’s Only Revolutions, which shows a couple arguing in a field, attached to billowing red and blue flags.

“This was taken for real – those were huge silk billowing [flags] and they had to be held up,” she said. “His creativity was respected, enjoyed, appreciated, by those who knew him and loved him – not always by those who worked for him, because he was very demanding as a boss. But the counterpoint to that is he was an amazing collaborator.”

Mr Thorgerson worked furiously throughout his life, Ms Antonis said, taking only a short break after suffering a stroke in 2003 that left him partly paralysed. And he continued working when he was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually killed him, aged 69.

In Ms Antonis’ words: “He only stopped working because he was dead.”

She said of the exhibition: “I hope it touches people… I hope they take away a sense of his creativity. I hope people take away a feeling of tremendous curiosity, like: how the hell did he do it?’”

The exhibition began on June 21 and runs to July 17