St Ives and the International Avant-Garde
If you’re heading down Cornwall way this summer, drop into the wonderful Tate St Ives…
Drawing on British and international works in the Tate collection, this display takes post-war art in St Ives as a starting point through which to explore common characteristics in European and American modern art from the 1930′s to the late 1970′s. It is the Tate’s most extensive collection display for over ten years.
The three rooms in the display are titled Object, Gesture and Grid respectively. Object reveals how cubism and surrealism influenced form in the mid to late twentieth century, from Pablo Picasso to Barbara Hepworth.
The materiality of paint and its connection to subconscious expression is considered through gesture. Recalling significant European modernist movements through the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Karel Appel, Gesture considers the influence on St Ives artists such as Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon.
Works by Joseph Albers, Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd illustrate how the grid has dawn the painting, sculpture and architecture together, making the viewer both psychologically and physically part of the artistic experience.
Visit http://www.tate.org.uk/stives for more information.
