Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the First and Second World Wars.
John Rattenbury Skeaping, R.A. was an English sculptor and equine painter and sculptor. He designed animal figures for Wedgwood.
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects. His style was of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moore early in his career. He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation. His work Veduggio Glimpse, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is currently on display as part of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.
Sandra Betty Blow was an English abstract painter and one of the pioneers of the British abstract movement of the 1950s. Blow's works are characteristically large scale, colourful abstract collages made from discarded materials.
Bryan Herbert Wynter was one of the St. Ives group of British painters. His work was mainly abstract, drawing upon nature for inspiration.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE was one of the foremost British abstract artists, a member of the influential Penwith Society of Arts.
George Peter Lanyon was a Cornish painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. Lanyon was one of the most important artists to emerge in post-war Britain. Despite his early death at the age of forty-six he achieved a body of work that is amongst the most original and important reappraisals of modernism in painting to be found anywhere. Combining abstract values with radical ideas about landscape and the figure, Lanyon navigated a course from Constructivism through Abstract Expressionism to a style close to Pop. He also made constructions, pottery and collage.
Sir Alan Bowness CBE is a British art historian and former museum director. He was the Director of the Tate Gallery between 1980 and 1988.
The Penwith Society of Arts is an art group formed in St Ives, Cornwall, England, UK, in early 1949 by abstract artists who broke away from the more conservative St Ives School. It was originally led by Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, and included members of the Crypt Group of the St Ives Society, including Peter Lanyon and Sven Berlin. Other early members included: Leonard Fuller, Isobel Heath, Alexander Mackenzie, John Wells, Bryan Wynter, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, David Haughton, Denis Mitchell, and the printer Guido Morris. Herbert Read was invited to be the first president.
Prunella Clough was a prominent British artist. She is known mostly for her paintings, though she also made prints and created assemblages of collected objects. She was awarded the Jerwood Prize for painting, and received a retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain.
The St Ives School refers to a group of artists living and working in the Cornish town of St Ives. The term is often used to refer to the 20th century groups which sprung up after the First World War around such artists as Borlase Smart, however there was considerable artistic activity there from the late 19th Century onwards.
Lynn Russell Chadwick, was an English sculptor and artist. Much of his work is semi-abstract sculpture in bronze or steel. His work is in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Tate in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Paul Feiler was a German-born artist who was a prominent member of the St Ives School of art: he has pictures hanging in major art galleries across the world.
Eric Craven Gregory, also known as Peter Gregory, was a publisher and benefactor of modern art and artists.
Robert Adams was an English sculptor and designer. Whilst not widely known outside of artistic circles, he was nonetheless regarded as one of the foremost sculptors of his generation. In a critical review of a retrospective mounted by the Gimpel Fils gallery in London in 1993, Brian Glasser of Time Out magazine described Adams as "the neglected genius of post-war British sculpture", a sentiment echoed by Tim Hilton in the Sunday Independent, who ranked Adams' work above that of his contemporaries, Ken Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick and Bernard Meadows.
Margaret Nairne Mellis was a British artist, one of the early members and last survivors of the group of modernist artists that gathered in St Ives, in Cornwall, in the 1940s. She and her first husband, Adrian Stokes, played an important role in the rise of St Ives as a magnet for artists. She later married Francis Davison, also an artist, and became a mentor to the young Damien Hirst.
Metavisual Tachiste Abstract was a pivotal exhibition mounted by the Redfern Gallery, London in 1957. Subtitled 'Painting in England Today', Metavisual Tachiste Abstract ran from 4 April 1957 - 4 May 1957. The exhibition was composed almost exclusively of works painterly abstraction and many of the leading British artists of the day exhibited works - including Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Ben Nicholson, Roger Hilton, Robyn Denny, Alan Davie, Terry Frost, Sandra Blow and Gillian Ayres.
The Geometry of Fear was an informal group or school of young British sculptors in the years after the Second World War. The term was coined by Herbert Read in 1952 in his description of the work of the eight British artists represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia of 1952.
Abigail Reynolds is a British artist who lives in St Just, Cornwall, and has a studio at Porthmeor in St Ives.
