The Arts Society Ashdown Forest - The Avant Garde in Cornwall 1939 - 1964 by Sarah Burles

The arrival of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo in St Ives at the beginning of the Second World War marked a significant moment, both for them and the artists already living and working in the small Cornish town.
These three artists were key players in British modernism and soon challenged the status quo of the existing artists’ colony, established at the end of the 19th century. They inspired and, in Hepworth’s case employed, a younger generation of artists before they too were challenged by new ideas.
This lecture will chart the rise of St Ives as a centre for modern art after the war and show that it was not only Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo who achieved international success, but other artists including Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost and Wilhemena Barnes Graham.
Their successes meant that the town became a focal point for post-war avant garde art, which led the eyes of the modern art world to focus, for a brief period, on St Ives.