Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in St. Andrews in 1912, and attended Edinburgh College of Art. She then moved away from her native Scotland, finding her way to Cornwall in 1940, where she became acquainted with a collective of modernist artists including Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo. This is the environment from which the first set of paintings in this new exhibition emerged. Scenes of Cornwall’s seaside towns fill the first of four rooms, and establish the initial step in Barns-Graham’s artistic development.
This exhibition demonstrates the transformation Barns-Graham’s work underwent over the first thirty years of her career
The second room contains work from the late 1940s and early 1950s, after she had broken away from the St. Ives coterie. The stylistic evolution in her work during this period is evident. Despite her spilt with the school of artists she had previously been a part of, their influence is seen throughout these paintings. Gabo’s constructivist, geometric style, for instance, can be found in her paintings of Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier. Barns-Graham scaled the glacier in 1949, and her studies of it are a highlight of the exhibition.
We then move into Barns-Graham’s experimentations with colour – specifically, with red. Barns-Graham experienced synaesthesia, and spoke of how, because of this, she associated people and places with certain colours. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, colour was a central theme in her work, and her move towards brighter hues in the 1950s is unmistakable in this selection. The choice to focus solely on her red paintings is striking, and marks a real change from the themes of the exhibition’s other phases. Her focus on landscapes continues here, however, with Italian and Spanish landscapes featuring.
Barns-Graham’s religious, mathematic, and geographic influences are all present in this display
The exhibition’s final room demonstrates the transformation Barns-Graham’s work underwent over the first thirty years of her career. The representational style of her early Cornish works has disappeared completely, overtaken by vibrant abstraction. Works from her series Things of a Kind in Order and Disorder, completed in the 1960s, are included here, and the transition from her focus on squares during this period to circles in the following decade is presented delicately and effectively. Barns-Graham’s religious, mathematic, and geographic influences are all present in this climatic display.
With over seventy works to view, this exhibition provides a unique opportunity to reassess Barns-Graham’s artistic progression and impact. Not only this, but it has been more than thirty years since this number of Barns-Graham’s paintings have been displayed together. For any fans of abstract art – or anyone looking for a refreshing, thought-provoking break between lectures – it is not to be missed.
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: Paths to Abstraction is at the Hatton Gallery on campus until 20th May, and entry is free to all.