PRESS RELEASE: St Ives & Modern British 2023

Mixed Exhibition:
St Ives & Modern British 2023

8 April – 8 May 2023, Belgrave St Ives
Private View: 8 April 12 – 3pm

The much-anticipated annual St Ives exhibition at Belgrave St Ives offers clients and collectors the chance to buy accessibly priced works by some of the major names in Post-War Modernism.

Includes works by W. Barns-Graham, Sven Berlin, Sandra Blow, Maurice Cockrill, Dennis Creffield, Tom Cross, Paul Feiler, Terry Frost, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Rose Hilton, John Hoyland, Peter Lanyon, Alexander Mackenzie, John Milne, Denis Mitchell, Ben Nicholson, Bryan Pearce, Alan Reynolds, John Wells and many others.

With a focus on Modernism there are many works from the St Ives School. Highlights include a painting by the artist Karl Weschke called Trees. Although he was creating abstract works when he moved to Cornwall in 1955, haunting landscapes became his figurative idiom. Full of dichotomy, the painting ‘Trees’ presents powerful feelings. The tree-like figure is resilient, standing proud. Its surrounds glow and allude to Cornwall’s heritage and colours. It also feels like a sculptural cloak or a figure emptied of energy from a gruelling long horseback ride. No doubt, the Cornish moors and stunted trees near to Weschke’s home influenced this painting but also his lived experience as a prisoner of war.

Trees 1970 Karl Weschke

This painting has an impressive exhibition history. It was selected for the first British Art Show in 1979 by the Arts Council titled ‘Recent Paintings and Sculpture by 112 Artists’. The following year, Weschke held a one-man exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, from which the Tate Gallery purchased a painting. The Tate acquired three further paintings in 1994. In 1996 they allocated a room to the artist and a retrospective exhibition was held at Tate St Ives in 2003.

Another highlight is a drawing by Peter Lanyon called ‘Back of Carn Brea’. Although this work is monochrome – made with charcoal and gouache – it again embraces the landscape of Cornwall including alluding to its colour. Carn Brea means rocky hill in Cornish. It is one of the most important early Neolithic sites in the United Kingdom and one of the highest points in Cornwall. It boosts impressive evidence of human activity for the past 6000 years, which includes mining activity from the 1800s.

Back of Carn Brea 1960 Peter Lanyon

No doubt Lanyon was drawn to its mining history as well as its rock formations. As a Cornishman, Lanyon would also have also been attracted to it for symbolical reasons. Carn Brea can be seen for miles. It is a focal point for Cornish language, song and various types of pilgrimage and different types of identity. Archaeologist Jacky Nowakowski sees ‘the fields hugging the edges of the hill along the base’ – scattered rocks, heather outcrops; and mineshafts too and perhaps the mine engine at the northern edge of the Carn. The drawing is high-energy with its gestural strokes radiating from the motif.

Other works not be missed are an early Roger Hilton dated c1930s-40s, and a collection of Wilhelmina Barn-Graham paintings, including a visceral gouache titled ‘Reds on Orange’ dated 1958. The gallery have worked with the Wilhelmina Barn-Graham Trust for a number of years, representing the artist in the South West. There are also works by artists who have visited St Ives and exhibited in the town. The late John Hoyland, whose solo exhibition ‘The Trajectory of a Fallen Angel, Paintings 1966 – 2003’ at Tate St Ives in 2006, has two historic prints in the show dating 1969 and 1976 respectively.

Homage to Constable 1976 John Hoyland

Belgrave St Ives opened in 1998 in the centre of St Ives and moved from the historic town to the countryside 2 miles outside in 2022. Clients can now enjoy the beautiful moorland hinterland of St Ives whilst viewing art. The new location near Towednack, stretches down to Zennor and beyond, via Carn Galva and through to Pendeen and St Just. The area has been home to many of St Ives best known and accomplished artists: Patrick Heron, Bryan Wynter, Karl Weschke, Sandra Blow, Anthony Benjamin, Trevor Bell, Roger Hilton, and many others.

With stunning views of Penwith’s AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) to the south, and to Godrevy in the north, the ancient landscape is also home to the many Neolithic sites for which the area is so well known.