Page 4 - Art First: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: 2014

Introduction

2012 was Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s centenary year. She had died
in January 2004 aged 91, while she was in the midst of working
on an exhibition of new work for Art First, a show which indeed took
place that April. Not only did it celebrate her life, and her lifelong
commitment to her art, it also brought to a close the happy and
stimulating final decade of her life as a painter.

In the ten years that have followed, high profile exhibitions have
taken place, presenting the grand historical sweep of her develop -
ment from early years in St Ives in 1940s when she worked amongst
a group of artists that included Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth,
Naum Gabo (dur ing his influ ential seven year residence in St Ives),
Alfred Wallis, Margaret Mellis, John Wells, Denis Mitchell, Bryan
Wynter, Bernard Leach, and continued alongside the next group
of painters to settle in St Ives, Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Patrick
Heron and Terry Frost, all of whom she outlived.

To date there has been only one exhibition that attempted
to pro vide a serious overview of the 50 years of Barns-Graham’s
achieve ments, held in Scotland in 1989 at the Edinburgh City
Art Centre (and tour) with a thoughtful and considered critique
written by Douglas Hall. Tate’s two revelatory survey exhi bitions,
An Enduring Image in 1999 and posthumously, Movement and Light
Imag(in)ing Time in 2005, with its illuminating catalogue essay
by Mel Gooding, updated and broadened a new critical audience.
For her Centenary year, the Fleming Collection and Edinburgh
City Art Centre hosted the exhibition Wilhelmina Barns-Graham:
A Scottish artist in St Ives, curated by Lynne Green. Simultane ously,
Green’s monograph W. Barns-Graham: a studio life (2001) was
updated and reprinted and remains the most comprehensive
account of the artist’s life and work.