Modern Art and St Ives

Modern Art and St Ives explores the art and artists that we associate with St Ives from 1915 to 1965, within a national and international context. The art of post-war St Ives drew upon two key strands of modern art. The first was the utopian ideal of Constructivism, that began in Moscow in the 1910s and continued through Berlin and Paris between the wars. St Ives-born Peter Lanyon, for example, began making constructions in 1939 when he was working in the studio of Russian sculptor Naum Gabo. (On the outbreak of World War II Gabo had followed Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson to St Ives.) The second strand was the tradition of craft and the handmade. Carving and ceramic work from all over Europe can be compared with the St Ives work of this period, and shared influences understood in each. Major works by leading St Ives artists are placed alongside that of their contemporaries from elsewhere in Europe, North America and beyond. Works from public and private collections in the UK and abroad help to situate artists engagement with St Ives within wider global artistic and aesthetic concerns.