St Ives Exhibition 2019

Our flagship exhibition of works by artists associated with St Ives Modernism opens on 6th April. This annual exhibition offers collectors the chance to buy over 100 accessibly-priced works by most of the key names in post-War St Ives art, as well as presenting quality works by some less well known artists working in St Ives during the period.

Above: Dennis Mitchell Breage 1969 Bronze

Over 50 artists associated with the St Ives School are included, such as: Robert Adams, John Barnicoat, W. Barns-Graham, Romi Behrens, Sven Berlin, Sandra Blow, Bob Bourne, Henry Cliffe, Roy Conn, Tom Cross, Bob Crossley, John Emanuel, Michael Finn, Clifford Fishwick, Terry Frost, Jeff Harris, Patrick Hayman, Isobel Heath, Adrian Heath, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Rose Hilton, Roger Hilton, Inez Hoyton, Bryan Ingham, Peter Lanyon, Jeremy Le Grice, Margo Maeckelberghe, William Marshall, June Miles, John Milne, Denis Mitchell, Ben Nicholson, Kate Nicholson, Breon O’Casey, J A Park, Victor Pasmore, Bryan Pearce, Jack Pender, Douglas Portway, Peter Potworowski, Tommy Rowe, William Scott, Michael Snow, John Wells, Karl Weschke and Bryan Wynter.

Key sculptural works

Michael Snow Landscape Construction 1986
Oil on canvas board with metal construct; 32 x 28 cms (perspex box)

John Milne Resurgence
Bronze; Edition of 2/9
Literature: ‘The Sculpture of John Milne’, Peter Davies, 2000, pages 38 and 89

Tommy Rowe Two Forms Roskestal
Bronze; Edition 1/9

Paintings, highlights 

Patrick Heron 5:15 p.m. June 11 : 1984 (with charcoal) 1984
Oil and charcoal on canvas; 41 x 51 cms
Signed, titled, dated and inscribed on the reverse (also titled on canvas overlap) Exhibited: Patrick Heron, Barbican Art Gallery, London,1985, cat. no.64

Kate Nicholson Haystack in Cumbrian Fields c1950s
Oil on board; 99 x 91 cms
Signed on artist’s label on reverse

Breon O’Casey Untitled
Acrylic on paper; 33 x 50 cms
Signed and dated

Sought after prints

Victor Pasmore Points of Contact No.26 1974
Lithograph; 49 x 51 cms
Frame size: 101.5 x 76.5 cms Signed with monogram
There is a copy of this print in the Tate Collection

Ben Nicholson Abstract Composition 1935/36
Screenprint, 66.5 x 80 cms (sheet)
From the ‘Penwith Portfolio’ of 1973 Printed by Stanley Jones at The Curwen Press Signed in pencil on reverse Edition of 90

William Scott Blue Still Life 1975
Frame size: 80 x 100 cms Printed at Curwen Studio, London Published by Editions Electo Ltd, London Signed in the stone with the publication line

You can view more works here. A full coloured catalogue is available on request.

For further information and images, please contact Richard Blackborow:

Belgrave St Ives, 22 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE

richard@belgravestives.co.uk

tel. 01736 794888

Bryan Pearce, St Ives Artist – some exhibition context for you to enjoy.

With one long weekend left to see the Pearce exhibition, we thought we’d share texts and other context related artwork we have on show. Consisting of oil paintings, drawings by Bryan, the exhibition also includes work by Leonard Fuller (who led the St Ives School of Painting in the 1950s attended by Pearce) and work by his mother and artist friends.

From the 1970s, with the help of other St Ives artists, Pearce produced a series of etchings. Also, under the direction of fellow artists and master printmaker, a number of silk screen stencils based on his oil paintings were produced. Sympathetic to the original paintings these limited edition prints are signed by Pearce.

Pearce remained largely uninfluenced by other artists although is mother was a good amateur artist. Often paired with the earlier local Naive artist, Alfred Wallis, although with different temperaments, both are genuine ‘Outsider’ artists with a similar matter-of-fact freshness and singularity of view.

Peter Lanyon Standing Stones 1951.
Sheet size: 55.5 x 38 cms Signed and dated Registration Proof

Peter Lanyon

The harbour, the coastguard, or the bridge over the railway happen to Bryan Pearce who is a native of St Ives. All these things have an activity which is not only seen, there, is evidence in every painting of an awareness which is more direct, the knowing which a man will have for land or sea or craft. When this understanding is linked to the kind of play which is common in child art, the combination is called Folk Art. If a category is necessary, Bryan Pearce is nearest to this.

His art emerges at a time when sophistication is disintegrating St Ives painting, and a self-conscious group of artists is mourning the decline of a fictitious ‘St Ives School’. Bryan Pearce takes a walk to Carbis Bay, returning by the cliff path to paint what has happened with a blue sea and green grass and side-seen house and around corner looks, that have been avoided in the quaint and pretty concept of picture postcard St Ives, and exploited in boutique primitivism. Because his sources are not seen with a passive eye, but are truly happenings, his paintings original.

Theory and speculation usually put distance between the event and its descriptions, and the painting is subjected to stretching by miles of elastic works, so that the acts of observing, making and communicating are all studies out of context. These paintings may be subjects of analysis to some people but that activity is not going to make the paintings more understandable. It is necessary to accept these works as the labour of a man who has to communicate this way because there is no other. It is then possible to celebrate the facts and not the theory.

Catalogue introduction
St. Martin’s Gallery, London 1964

Denis Mitchell and Kate Nicholson

Sir Alan Bowness

These enchanting sunlit paintings are mostly of St Ives—the boats in the harbour, the fishermen’s cottages and gardens, the parish church that ones sees below Bryan Pearce’s studio window. It is a serene untroubled world that reflects the natural innocence and delight of a man who has found relief and rehabilitation through painting. For Bryan Pearce has suffered since childhood from a crippling mental illness (phenylketonuria) that has made normal communication impossible for him, and in Peter Lanyon’s words he ‘…has to communicate this way because there is no other.’

Catalogue introduction
New Art Centre, London 1966

Mary Pearce (Pearce’s mother) and Leonard Fuller (Pearce’s teacher)

H. S. Ede

If anyone is in need of peace, trust and joy, they will find it in the work of Bryan Pearce. He gives with his whole being, totally free of sophistication and totally altruistic; he paints as he breathes. These stones which form a pier, this blue which surrounds a ship, this island and lighthouse, this road, church, window, flowers in their pot, a thousand visual things, are the deep unconscious quality of this interior life and his immediate contact with his close friend God.

I know of no artist with whom I can compare him in this direct simplicity and devotion save Fra Angelico who would place one colour against another with assurance and tenderness, and yet, so it is said, when he painted the body of Jesus, he closed his eye in humble knowledge of his own frailty

Bryan Pearce has this inward vision, undisturbed by greed, desire of worldly achievement, concern with his own personality and much else; and such wholeness lives in the his absorbed loved, expressed he know not how.

It isn’t at all as a naïve painter he should be classed, or even perhaps as a ‘painter’—he really knows little of technique—but as an individual actively happy in reproducing the beauty of the visual works and his instinctive entrapment in it. I am grateful to him for this unhindered vision which is the deathless source of art.

Catalogue introduction
Falmouth Art Gallery. Cornwall 1982

Breon O’Casey and Barbara Hepworth 

Always beginning a painting with a feint pencil outline and gradually blocking in areas using a personal palette of colours, a sense of order and calmness, bathed in the ambient light of western Cornwall, pervades Pearce’s work.

MODERN BRITISH & CONTEMPORARY 11th to 25th February 2019

People are revelling in our Spring Half term exhibition – it’s full of painting and prints of different scales that you can dive into. You can keep seeing more. We are open 10-530pm from Monday to Saturday and you can ask to see Gallery 2 for a sneak peak at uncatalogued works.

WINTER EXHIBITION 2018

WINTER EXHIBITION 2018 – Installation and PV

The show – a large mixed exhibition of prints, drawings, small paintings and 3D works by Modern British and Contemporary artists – opened on Saturday 1st December and runs through to 7 January 2019.

The Private View was spiced up by locally-made gin from St Ives Liquor and lively music by Melange Tous (Delphi Hudson & Nigel Bispham). A good time was had by all!

VIEW PICTURES / VIEW 3D WORKS

Belgrave @ British Art Fair

20 – 23 Sept 2018

The British Art Fair has just opened at the Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY. Please  do come and see us on the Second Floor, Stands 36 & 38, (illustrated above) if you can.

As well as the extraordinary sculpture Two Forms in Echelon 1961 by Barbara Hepworth, you will also find works by Robert Adams, W. Barns-Graham, Sven Berlin, Sandra Blow, Paul Feiler, Terry Frost, Patrick Hayman, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Denis Mitchell, Ben Nicholson, Kate Nicholson, Bryan Pearce, Brian Rice, William Scott, John Wells and others.

You can view a selection of the works on our website here, but the show is much better experienced by a visit. Please contact the gallery if you would like a complimentary eVitation.

THE LONDON GROUP AT ST IVES

74 members of the London Group are exhibiting in St Ives, Cornwall this September, making this one of the biggest shows in the Group’s history. The show run’s for a month in the glorious Penwith Gallery to coincide with the yearly St Ives Festival so it should get a good reception in Cornwall. The London Group at St Ives marks the second leg of a house-swap with the Penwith Society of Arts who exhibited at the Cello Factory back in April 2018. In addition, here at Belgrave St Ives, there is a further show highlighting the historical connections between group members and the area.

Many of the group members will be travelling to Cornwall to be at the openings on Friday 7th and there will be Artists talks during the exbition on Saturday 8 September 10.30 -12.00 am at the Penwith Gallery.

We are celebrating the exhibitions as part of the St Ives September Festival. There will be so much to see and do!

Fully illustrated colour catalogues are available on request. Please contact the galleries.

 

Jessica Cooper, The Intimate Landscape

PRESS RELEASE

The Intimate Landscape Belgrave St Ives 8 – 29 October 2018

This October, Belgrave St Ives presents The Intimate Landscape, an exhibition of new paintings by artist Jessica Cooper RWA. This collection of works is inspired by two separate yet distinctly parallel landscapes – St Ives in the artist’s home county of Cornwall, and the village of Messanges in South West France – both of which have special meaning to the artist. Similar in their coastal beauty, with wide white sands, simple architecture and laid back coastal culture, the essence of these two villages are defined on canvas in Cooper’s distinctly reductive style. Created almost as a sketchbook collection of works, comprising large scale landscape paintings and a series of smaller works, they mark Cooper’s return to painting the landscape after two years of work in digital and mixed media projects in the UK and United States.

In addition, the artist has created a three-minute film of moving images which contextualises the collection. Entitled I Never Want To Lose Another Day, the film gives personal insight into Cooper’s relationship with St Ives and Messanges, and captures the peace and beauty of these unique Atlantic locations. The film will be on show in the gallery throughout the exhibition.

See The Intimate Landscape, from 8 to 29 October 2018 at Belgrave St Ives
22 Fore St, St Ives, Cornwall TR26 1HE.

 -END-

Jessica Cooper | Where It All started Again

Print ready 300pdi images for press use are available, please request. 

 

Editors Notes

 

Jessica Cooper RWA

Jessica Cooper has lived and worked in Cornwall’s West Penwith for most of her life. She studied at Falmouth College of Art, and at Goldsmith’s, University of London, and is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, Penwith Society of Artists, and is an elected RWA. She exhibits regionally, nationally and internationally on a regular basis, including exhibitions at The Exchange and Newlyn Art Gallery, the RWA and Tate St. Ives.

www.jessicacooper.co.uk

 

Belgrave St Ives

Belgrave St Ives specialises in Modern British and Contemporary Art. There is an emphasis on work by artists associated with Cornwall from the 1930s to the present time. The gallery is the only private art gallery in Cornwall showing regular exhibitions of work by major artists associated with the St Ives Modern Period as well as exhibitions of works by other select Modern British and Contemporary Artists. The gallery works with a number of artists, artists’ estates, collectors and other galleries, to produce an annual programme of changing monthly one-person and themed exhibitions usually accompanied by published material.

www.belgravestives.co.uk

 

For further press information or additional images contact Mercedes at Fine Art Communications director@fineartcommunications.co.uk / Tel 07825 270235 /

www.fineartcommunications.co.uk