Situation Group

Critic and art historian Lawrence Alloway coined the term in London circa 1960. The importance of the abstract painters of the "Situation Group" lay in their high level of professionalism. They shunned the simple confined principles of British art and aimed at mastery of the international tradition of abstract painting. Too many of the then-existing wave of Pop artists, though profiting from the environmental openness of some of the Situation painters, were content with slipshod and liberal values. Alloway’s wife Sylvia Sleigh, painted a group portrait entitled 'The Situation Group in London in 1961', which is now in the collection of the NPG.

The exhibition 'Situation', took place at the RBA Gallery in London, in September 1960. It was composed of paintings by twenty artists connected in ways that were not immediately obvious. Although not a member, John Hoyland exhibited with them during their short-lived but influential existence. Arguably, the reason for the brevity of their tenure is that immediately after their rise, Pop Art came to the fore which appealed to a wider public and was largely easier for the masses to comprehend.

Situation Group portrait by Sylvia Sleigh in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery as follows from the left:

Rear Row: Henry Mundy, Gwyther Irwin, William Turnbull, Peter Coviello.
Middle Row: Gillian Ayres, John Plumb, Peter Stroud, Roger Coleman, Unknown, Bernard Cohen
Front Row: Gordon House, Lawrence Alloway.

Image(s) below (click to enlarge):