The Arrival of Modernism
Important as they were in different ways, the busy artists' studios and the presence of Alfred Wallis in his Back Road West cottage and of Bernard Leach in his pottery on the town's western outskirts would not have been enough to turn St Ives into the centre of progressive contemporary European art that it became during the 1940s and the following decades. This was largely the result of a third formative event: at the onset of war in 1939 Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth decided to move out of London for the safety of their young family and come to Cornwall at the invitation of a writer friend, Adrian Stokes.
June 1937
© The Estate of Ben Nicholson. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2002
View in Tate Collection
During the 1930s the direction of Nicholson and Hepworth's work was similar. In painting and sculpture they were developing a vocabulary of pure, simplified forms, along with Henry Moore and such leading European practitioners of the new abstract art as Naum Gabo, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi and Jean Arp. For these artists abstraction and the concern with pure forms had a democratic, utopian social aspect and a universal character that could transcend national differences. This vision stood in stark contrast to the rise of fascism, with its emphasis on racial identity and literal, propagandistic art.
It should be remembered that, during the period up to the eve of the Second World War, Paris had remained the undisputed centre of the art world, and England, let alone Cornwall, was felt to be remote from the most progressive contemporary developments. In the late 1930s, however, many European artists and intellectuals emigrated to the relative safety of London; some, like Mondrian, were en route for America, others were attracted by the modernist outpost of St Ives.
Cornwall was to prove a fertile working environment for both Nicholson and Hepworth, and, alongside abstract themes, other concerns implicit in their work of the 1930s were to emerge more fully here. Hepworth had been exploring the modernist goal of 'truth to materials' and a refinement of natural forms in her carving of wood and stone. Nicholson's lifelong response to light as experienced in landscape can be seen even in his most severely abstract works. In St Ives they were joined by the sculptor Naum Gabo, whose work provided a crucial direct link to the heart of European modernism, raising awareness of art beyond the immediate locality. Younger artists such as Peter Lanyon, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and John Wells responded to the modernist circle, though with limited opportunities to produce work during the war.
Unlike younger artists, Nicholson was not called up for active service; his writings during the war years helped publicise St Ives, and by 1945 the town's long-established status as an art colony had acquired a further dimension as an internationally known centre of modern art.