Discover the work of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s, one of the most innovative figures in British modernism and a key member of St Ives’s mid-century artistic community.
Bringing together over 170 paintings, drawings and rarely seen archival materials, this is the largest and most comprehensive survey of her work ever presented. It follows Barns-Graham’s eight-decade career, from early landscapes and studio interiors to the bold colour, rhythmic forms and sweeping gestures of her later work. See how she continually found new possibilities in abstraction.
For Barns-Graham, landscape was more than something to observe. It was a source of sensation, memory and emotion. Inspired by Scotland, Cornwall and continental Europe, she transformed what she saw and felt into a distinctive visual language exploring inner perception and the external world – what she called ‘looking in / looking out’.
At the heart of the exhibition, discover the largest-ever museum presentation of her glacier works. Following a visit to Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier in 1949, Barns-Graham translated the experience of ice, light and movement into dynamic compositions that marked a turning point in her work.
The exhibition concludes with the vibrant Scorpio paintings of her final decades, which are charged with colour, energy and movement.
Supported by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Exhibition Supporters Circle and Tate Members. This exhibition organised by Tate St Ives in collaboration with the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust.
