St. Ives School

With the outbreak of war in 1939 the artists' colony of St. Ives, which already included Adrian Stokes and his wife Margaret Mellis, was augmented by several of the modernists who had been working in the Hampstead area of London. The first to arrive were Barbara Hepworth and her then husband Ben Nicholson; they were soon joined by Naum and Miriam Gabo, thus bringing together in Cornwall three leading members of the Constructivist movement. Although, in the main, the traditionalist artists of St. Ives were hostile to the modernists' ideas, the newcomers were welcomed by Borlase Smart, one of the leading members of the St. Ives Society of Artists. This resulted in Nicholson, Hepworth and Miriam Gabo joining the Society and exhibiting with them. In 1940 Wilhelmina Barns-Graham joined the group, as did Sven Berlin after service with the Commandos, and by the end of the war in 1945 the teaching and influence of the modernists had created a recognized 'school of painting' within the colony. In turn, the Cornish landscape had impacted upon the artists, modulating their approach and resulting in figurative and landscape elements being incorporated into their work.

Although Gabo left Cornwall for the USA in 1946, Nicholson stayed in St. Ives until 1958 and Hepworth for the remainder of her life until her death in 1975. The tension between the traditionalists and modernists continued into the post-war years and in 1947, when a group of the younger avant-garde artists were offered exhibiting space in the crypt of a local chapel, an offshoot group – the Crypt Group – was spawned. This included Peter Lanyon, Sven Berlin, John Wells and Bryan Wynter as founder members. In addition to providing an exhibiting forum for the St. Ives-based modernists, the Crypt Group – later to become the Penwith Society – attracted visiting artists such as Patrick Heron and Victor Pasmore, although the latter was never really associated with the School. With the opening of Tate St. Ives in 1992, the work of the modernists from Wallis onwards, particularly that of Hepworth and Nicholson, was brought together as a collection and the St. Ives School finally received public recognition with its influence on twentieth century art rightly acknowledged.