Abstraction-Création
An association of abstract painters and sculptors formed in Paris in February 1931, a successor to the short-lived Cercle et Carré. It was open to artists of all nationalities and its organization ...
Adrian Stokes
(b London, 27 Oct. 1902; d London, 15 Dec. 1972).British writer and painter. An intensely subjective writer with an interest in psychoanalysis, Stokes responded passionately, even ecstatically, to ...
Ben Nicholson
(1894–1982)British abstract painter and the first winner of the Guggenheim International Prize. He was appointed to the OM in 1968.The eldest son of the painter Sir William Nicholson (1872–1949), he ...
Brian Wall
(1931– )British sculptor, born in London. From 1954 to 1958 he was assistant to Barbara Hepworth. He has worked mainly in welded steel, making abstract sculptures in this medium in the 1950s—a period ...
Circle
(1937)This important Modernist publication was edited by J. L. Martin, Ben Nicolson, and Naum Gabo and published by Faber, publishers of other important texts (such as Herbert Read's Art & Industry ...
Contemporary Style
This style was in vogue in the 1950s and was closely associated with the many of the new designs seen at the Festival of Britain exhibition of 1951, the major site for which was the South Bank in ...
direct carving
Carving a sculptural design directly into a material, most usually stone, as opposed to producing it through a plaster model and then a cast reproduction in a metal such as bronze. The latter ...
Edward Bainbridge Copnall
(1903–73)British sculptor and painter. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he moved to England at an early age. As a young artist he was drawn to the practice of direct carving, working on allegorical ...
Festival of Britain
A festival celebrated with lavish exhibitions and shows throughout Britain, especially at the South Bank in London (see Skylon) in May 1951, to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Henry Moore
(1898–1986)British sculptor and draughtsman. He was made a CH in 1955 and appointed to the OM in 1963.The son of a Yorkshire miner, Moore studied at Leeds School of Art after doing his military ...
Herbert Read
(1895–1968)After a brief spell as a bank clerk the British writer, critic, and poet Herbert Read studied at Leeds University before serving in the army in the First World War. He became an important ...
Hopton Wood stone
A very hard limestone quarried at Middleton, Derbyshire (Hopton is nearby), varying in colour from light grey to light tan and speckled with dark-grey crystals. It can be cut to ...
Jacques Lipchitz
(1891–1973)Lithuanian-born French innovative sculptor.Against the wishes of his father, a Jewish building contractor who wanted his son to study engineering, Lipchitz went in 1909 to Paris, where he ...
Marlborough Fine Art
London. Firm of art dealers founded in London in 1946 by two Austrian-born dealers who had emigrated to England because of the rise of Nazism: Frank Lloyd (1911–98) and Harry Fischer (1903–77) (who ...
Nicholson family
English painters. Sir William Nicholson (1872–1949) was a painter and engraver. He studied in Paris, admiring Manet and Velázquez. From 1893 to 1899 he and his brother-in-law James Pryde, designed ...
R. H. Wilenski
(b London, 7 Mar. 1887; d Marlow, Buckinghamshire, 19 Apr. 1975).British writer on art (and occasional painter). Much of his writing was devoted to modern art, and in the ...
Rachel Whiteread
(b London, 20 Apr. 1963).British sculptor. In 1988 she began making a novel type of sculpture consisting of casts of domestic features or the spaces around them (such as the space under a bed). These ...
Reg Butler
(b Buntingford, Hertfordshire, 28 Apr. 1913; d Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, 23 Oct. 1981).British sculptor. He trained as an architect and did not take up sculpture full-time until 1950. In 1953 he ...
Royal College of Art
RCA(established 1837)The RCA is one of the most illustrious art and design educational institutions in Britain and has a long and distinguished history. Its beginnings were as the Government School ...
Sir Alan Bowness
(1928– )British art historian and administrator, son-in-law of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. He studied modern languages at Cambridge University and history of art at the Courtauld Institute, ...
