A revelatory new take on art in Britain after the Second World War, a period when artists had to make sense of an entirely altered world.
Postwar Modern explores the art produced in Britain in the wake of a cataclysmic war. Certainty was gone, and the aftershocks continued, but there was also hope for a better tomorrow. These conditions gave rise to an incredible richness of imagery, forms and materials in the years that followed.
Focusing on ‘the new’, Postwar Modern features 48 artists and around 200 works of painting, sculpture, photography, collage and installation. It explores the subjects that most preoccupied artists, among them the body, the post-atomic condition, the Blitzed streetscape, private relationships and imagined future horizons. As well as reconsidering well-known figures, the exhibition foregrounds artists who came to Britain as refugees from Nazism or as migrants from a crumbling empire, in addition to female artists who have tended to be overlooked.
Artists
Alan Davie, Alison Smithson, Anthony Hill, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Aubrey Williams, Avinash Chandra, Bert Hardy,
Bill Brandt, David Hockney, David Medalla, Denis Williams, Eduardo Paolozzi, Elisabeth Frink, Eva Frankfurther,
Francis Newton Souza, Francis Bacon, Franciszka Themerson, Frank Auerbach, Frank Bowling, Gillian Ayres,
Gustav Metzger, Hans Coper, Jean Cooke , John Bratby, John Latham, John McHale, Kim Lim, Lee Miller,
Leon Kossoff, Lucian Freud, Lucie Rie, Lynn Chadwick, Magda Cordell, Mary Martin, Nigel Henderson,
Patrick Heron, Peter King, Peter Smithson, Prunella Clough, Richard Hamilton, Robert Adams, Robyn Denny,
Roger Mayne, Shirley Baker, Sylvia Sleigh, Victor Pasmore, William Scott, William Turnbull
| Duration | 03 March 2022 - 26 June 2022 |
| Times | Sun-Wed 10am-6pm (last entry 5pm) Thu-Sat 10am-8pm (last entry 7pm) |
| Cost | £18 |
| Venue | Barbican Art Gallery |
| Address | Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS |
| Contact | / art@barbican.org.uk / www.barbican.org.uk |