ST IVES

The St Ives artists were a loose group of artists working in Cornwall from the late 1930’s to the 1970’s, during this time they were considered to be the avant-garde of British art. They took the concept of abstraction into many new areas. Now they are internationally renowned and considered to be among the great painters of the 20th century. When Nicholson and Wood went to Cornwall on a painting trip in the 1920s they were following an all ready established tradition, many painters (Turner,Sickert etc) had gone there to experience the light, atmosphere and landscapes, and the Newlyn School had already become an important part of English art history. This new generation of painters, that began to establish themselves in the 30s and 40s brought with them a new modernism from Europe, following on from Cubism and Constructivism, this combined with the naïve style of folk art of Alfred Wallis ( a Cornish fisherman ) produced a unique modern style now known as ‘St Ives’.


As London became isolated during WW11 the St Ives community flourished, by the 1950s a second generation had continued to develop this unique English abstract style, and they began to gain attention around the world, comparisons to the New York school( a subject of much discussion) helped to bring their work to a wider audience.

By the 1960s the attention of the art world was drawn else where, but the legacy of the St Ives style remains and can be recognised in British abstract painting today.

Abstract Expressionism

Although the term Abstract Expressionism was first used in 1919 in relation to the work of Kandinsky, today we associate it with post war American painting, the art critic R. Coates coined the phrase in 1946, when referring to the work of Gorky, Pollock and DeKooning, by the 1950s the term was in general use to describe all types of contemporary abstract painting.


Not all the artists associated with the term produced work that was either purely abstract or purely expressionist. What connected them was an artistic philosophy, based on existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating (painting) and not necessarily the finished work and a shared interest in Jung’s ideas of myth, ritual and memory. They conceived a romantic view of the artist and saw them selves as disillusioned commentators of contemporary American life after the Depression and the Second World War

There were two distinct groups within the movement; one has become known as Action Painting, largely because of the gestural techniques of the painters which includes the Surrealist theory of Automatism (subconscious mark making) as well as bold brush strokes, dribbles and splashes. The second group became known as the Colour Field painters whose work was generally large in size and consisted of more simplified and unified blocks of colour, both groups shared the same ideas, as mentioned above, and sought to express their subconscious through their art.

Abstract Expressionism evolved in the 1940s, peaked in the 50s but had declined by the end of that decade.