Four Giants of British Modernism: Frost, Heron, Lanyon, Scott

19 September – 19 October 2019

Beaux Arts London announce Four Giants of British Modernism, an exhibition of celebrated British modern artists: Terry Frost, William Scott, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron.

The exhibition will feature 5-6 works from each of the Post Second World War modernists, sourced from private collections.

Beaux Arts Gallery worked with the late artists Frost, Scott, Lanyon and Heron during their careers and this exhibition offers a retrospective of some of their greatest works created as they revolutionised British Art.

The four artists lived and worked through the harsh time of post war Britain, and through their art were seeking to convey a new world of hope.They were pioneers of British Abstract Art and were associated with the celebrated St. Ives School along with Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Bernard Leach and many others. In the wake of the war, St. Ives, a fishing village in West Cornwall began to attract a wide range of young emerging artists due to its breath-taking scenery and clarity of light, owing to its peninsula positioning. Beaux Arts’ first gallery,Will’s Lane Gallery, was located there and thus became a central platform for exhibiting the work of artists of the St. Ives school from the early 70s.

While the artists had varied upbringings, all of them had profound connections with Cornwall. Terry Frost was brought up by his grandparents in a working-class family in Leamington Spa. At the age of 18 he joined the army and had his first artistic experience when painting rounders in red, white and blue on the wings of fighter planes and bombers. In 1942 he was captured by Nazis and held as prisoner of war for four years. After his release in 1946 he moved to St. Ives and lived in a one room cottage with his six children. Frost would take early morning walks by the sea and this is when he started to notice the reflections of boats and sails in the water, which became a source of inspiration for his geometric abstractions. Frost became a Royal Academician in 1992 and in 1998 was knighted.