Postwar Modern : New Art in Britain 1945-1965

Excellent exhibition at the Barbican looking at art in Britain in the twenty years after the Second World War.

Under 14 themes this show examined society in the period and how art reflected this. It covered the work of 48 artists many who were familiar to me but there were also new names to look out for in the future. I’m not sure I found a lot of the work attractive however I’ve never seen art that looked better in this rather brutalist space.

The show was also good at highlighting important exhibitions from the period such as “This is Tomorrow” at the Whitechapel in 1956 as well as highlight artists who represented Britain at the Venice Biennales, a good way of giving a different shape to the period.

New things I discovered included the work of John Bratby and Jean Cooke, a husband and wife whose art was used to challenge the idea of the home as a symbol of stability. Theirs was a turbulent relationship which was reflected in each of their paintings. Although the works were often challenging, they came as a relief to turn a corner and find some refreshingly realistic work.

There was good use of the work of Auberbach, Kossoff and Gustav Metzger to highlight how Jews who were effected by the war plated this out in their art and of Francis Bacon’s “Man in Blue” series of 1954, shown here, to represent homosexual life in the period.

Closed 26 June 2022

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