Wilhelmina Barns-Graham | A Journey Through Four Decades | The Scottish Gallery | November 2019

WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM A Journey Through Four Decades

WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM A Journey Through Four Decades 30 October – 26 November 2019 2 5 6

PREFACE by Guy Peploe LIFE BEYOND DEATH by Kate Downie RSA A JOURNEY THROUGH FOUR DECADES

by Dr. Isobel Caroline MacDonald

10 16 30 44 54 72 82

WHARFEDALE TO BARCELONA ORDER AND DISORDER A CONTINUATION OF SPACE THE COLLAGES LINES OF ENERGY LETTING RIP PRINTS

96 UNSIGNED AND POSTHUMOUS EDITIONS 99 BIOGRAPHY

1958 1964 1976 1982 1988 1996 1972

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1961 1972 1982 1985 1996 1998 2006

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PREFACE Guy Peploe The Scottish Gallery is happy to be defined by its lifelong association with the work and life of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912–2004). A dedicated artist; an innovator in times of change (and chaos); a woman artist finally triumphant in a predominantly masculine world; an artist happy to be a Scotswoman but whose work transcends boundaries, real or imagined. In seeking the significant in a long professional life she discovered the emotional, what Mark Rothko pinned down as his only interest in making art, “to express basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

The astonishing late flowering of Willie as a colourist springs from this emotionalism, but was delivered, as always, with the acuity and judgement she had garnered over a lifetime.

We are delighted to offer this latest selection of her work from four decades and give thanks to Kate Downie, Dr. Isobel MacDonald and Geoffrey Bertram for their contributions.

Right: Wilhelmina in her Barnaloft studio, St Ives, 1965–66

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LIFE BEYOND DEATH Kate Downie RSA I am writing this on the train south from Edinburgh on my way to a posthumous date with the art of Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool and thinking about how alive some artists, BarnsGraham and Haring both, can somehow still seem, kicking out colour and pattern with intelligent vivacity way beyond the grave. I irrationally ponder, ‘what is she going to come up with next?’ as if she were secretly still alive or the paintings carried on developing themselves!

Although she was born well over 100 years ago she really belongs to that group of post war innovators who broke the rules as a matter of course and helped to define modernity in British art. Willie painted and drew with passion for most of her life, and famously co-produced a late flowering of beautiful prints within a committed collaboration with Graal Press, many of these editions being realised posthumously. As Guy Peploe remarked to me in my studio as we sifted through piles of my recent drawing and prints, ‘One never remembers the lazy artists, however talented.’ (I tried to stand up a bit straighter and look, comically, more determined.)

Barns-Graham was not only hard-working, she was dedicated and clear-thinking, even during times of hardship, ill health, disruption and anxiety. Application and a sense of self-belief being crucial, Barns-Graham painted through it all – marriage break-up, house moves, menopause, amazing travels and discoveries of the work of others.

This exhibition lays out some of the vital eras of development and discovery, superbly selected and curated between the directors of The Scottish Gallery and the BarnsGraham Trust. The Trust represents the artist into the future, as crucially does The Scottish Gallery (as during her lifetime) making her influence felt nationally and internationally.

As a painter I like to think that I can feel my way through her materials and the way they are applied to paper or

canvas. Lime and Flame (cat. 1), a painting from 1958, is sensuously free-flowing and, like so many of her brave compositions, works on the premise of what I call the 90:10 rule. That is, in this instance, 90% of hot reds/earth colours and rampant black gestural marks, offset by that relatively cool lime and ochre at the top. The title directs one to the abstraction of colour and mark and gives the viewer a way in.

Gorgeous. Likewise I spot this compositional equation in one of her Untitled (Tarragona Series), 1960 (cat. 3), with that small splash of blue singing its way across the room towards you. But possibly my favourite is the Number 5 (Tribute Series), 1982 (cat.17), because it somehow embodies all that came before, and adds weight to her observation, ‘Art expression is a voice between two things. Abstract expression and the very human gesture. One doesn’t work without the other’.

She was my age when she painted this, and so much that came after it was pure gold. Fingers crossed we all reach our prime eventually.

If she were alive today I’d like to think she would be pretty pleased with how much pleasure her work continues to give, and moreover, how much further embedded into the art history of this country she has become. Like many women artists whose life and work were often trivialised in their own lifetime, she is to art what Megan Rapinoe is to football, unapologetically talented and successful but someone who had to emerge from a baseline of critical derision and exclusion amongst her largely male peer group during her long career.

That we continue to celebrate her life and works is testimony to that passionate talent and to the joy that it brings.

As Marie Shear, New York writer and activist, wrote in 1986: ‘Feminism is the radical notion that women are people’.

What a person she was.

Left: Wilhelmina working at Balmungo, 1982. Photograph by Antonia Reeve

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A JOURNEY THROUGH FOUR DECADES Dr. Isobel Caroline MacDonald “I want my work to be a simple statement. […] To have interesting space relationships, relationships of colour, and colour to form – that is form suggesting colour and vice versa.”

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, 1950

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Journey Through Four Decades charts the artist’s progression into abstraction from 1958 to 1998. Bringing together paintings, collages and prints it highlights the main themes in Barns-Graham’s work of this period. A time of creative productivity and progression, the exhibition draws out a narrative of the artist’s exploration of the interrelationships of colour, form and space. The chosen works truly celebrate Barns-Graham as one of the foremost British abstract artists of her day.

Barns-Graham’s journey to abstraction was one founded on drawing and observation, learnt during her years at Edinburgh College of Art. This academic foundation stood her in good stead when she moved to St Ives in 1940, where her own inclination towards abstraction was nurtured and blossomed.

In the first published statement of her intentions by the art critic J.P. Hodin in 1950 the artist stated, “I am interested in using abstract forms mainly insofar as they are derived directly from natural sources by means of simplification within the movement of the picture itself: painting is pattern, and paintings should be just as good upside down, sideways, in a looking glass…” Her paintings of this period illustrate such a progression towards simplification of form, and a move away from the representational in favour of an exploration of remodelled natural forms.

From 1958, where the exhibition begins, Barns-Graham’s approach to abstraction changed. Untitled (Tarragona Series), 1960 (cat. 3) was painted after the artist visited the Balearic Islands. The trip marked her move away from more formal geometrical abstraction and towards more fluid forms. Her brushwork itself became integral to her practice, inspired by

Wilhelmina working at Porthmeor Studios, c.1957.

Photograph published in Cornish Magazine, 1962

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Wilhelmina, early 1940s

Wilhelmina in St Ives, c.1955

the work of Joan Miró and other local Spanish contemporary artists. In Untitled (Tarragona Series), 1960 (cat. 3), BarnsGraham creates form through broad brushstrokes. Black squares are painted over solid colour blocks. The injection of red, orange and blue illustrates the artist’s ability to manipulate form through colour. These smaller, gestural, brushstrokes give the work a sense of movement.

Movement and simplicity were a factor present across Barns-Graham’s work, regardless of its evolution. Untitled [Tumbling Squares], c.1964 (cat. 4) and Two Reds and Two Greens, 1968, (cat. 7) are examples of works from the artist’s Things of a Kind of Order and Disorder Series, begun in 1963.

This series illustrated Barns-Graham’s interaction with colour theory and the simplest of geometric forms: the square and the circle. Her use of squares in Untitled [Tumbling Squares], c.1964 (cat. 4) follows her method of placing squares of card in a sequence on the floor. By nudging these at a single point, she could completely alter the relationships between them.

Two Reds and Two Greens, 1968 (cat. 7) illustrates BarnsGraham’s ability to “think in colour”. By reducing the variety

of shades of colour used, the artist highlights the individual elements of colours and their interaction when juxtaposed.

In both works her simple manipulation of form and colour brings an intense dynamism within the picture plane.

Barns-Graham’s repetition of form was constant throughout her career. Blue, Vermillion, Orange Disks on Scarlet, 1972 (cat. 11) shows a progression from the previous decade, yet there is a consistency in the artist’s concentration on the relationship between the depicted forms. As with Tumbling Squares, the circles are intentionally placed. Set against a block background of scarlet hue, the artist paints three distinct clusters of coloured discs. A singular red circle in the lower centre of the composition creates tension between the two halves of the board. On both the far left and right-hand side of the painting she truncates the discs, making them appear to be coming from beyond the picture plane. This gives the painting a horizontal energy.

Untitled [Mirage Series], 1976 (cat. 12) continues BarnsGraham’s exploration of the circular form, but her approach has become altogether looser. The horizontally divided

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Wilhelmina in 1993. Photograph by Anne Purkiss

Wilhelmina in Barnaloft studio, St Ives, 1988.

Photograph by David Crane

background evokes the artist’s earlier interest in natural forms, with the discs seemingly floating both above in a vertical formation and receding into an interior space. The paint application is thin, with fine pencil lines added over the paint reflecting her technique used in works of the early 1950s. This practice of returning to earlier themes in her work became a key aspect to Barns-Graham’s work, illustrating a consistency in her artistic intentions throughout her career.

Whilst the 1980s saw a continuation of Barns-Graham’s engagement with colour and geometric form, her vocabulary of form and the scale of works expanded. [A Study for Expanding Panels], 1979 (cat. 13), is part of the Expanding Forms, Touch Point Series. Rectangles and rhomboids move across the paper from right to left, depicted in bright hues of green, yellow, orange and red. The artist places the coloured shapes on top

of larger grey vertical forms, one of which is cut off by the left-hand edge of the paper. A thin horizontal blue rectangle cuts into the green rhomboid from the right, suggesting a point on touch. This simple placement of the form influences the vertical forms and displaces them. Although manipulated in a different manner this simultaneously echoes her cause and effect practice in the earlier Tumbling Squares Series, as well as her suggestion of a space beyond the picture plane in Blue, Vermillion, Orange Disks on Scarlet, 1972 (cat. 11).

In the mid-1980s Barns-Graham suffered from a period of illness that had an effect on her creative practice.

Weakened, she took to a process that allowed her to sit down while she worked. A series of small-scale collages, four of which are exhibited, represent one aspect of the artist’s creative response to her health. The intimate collages reflect

9 her interest in colour and form. Using shapes cut from card or paper, Barns-Graham constructed forms in relief. In Collage 37 (Strata), 1985 (cat. 21) discs are layered on top of one another, and the artist achieves a wave-like momentum through a transition of colour from brown to blue hues. The inclusion of rectangles as well as discs highlights her continued repetition of form in both the medium of paint and cut-and-paste.

1989 was a year that marked Barns-Graham’s recognition as an independent painter. The City Art Centre in Edinburgh organised a retrospective which subsequently toured to Newlyn Art Gallery and other venues, cementing her position as a celebrated abstract artist. The retrospective exhibited over one hundred paintings, and proved her significance within modern British art history. The exhibition had a significant effect on the artist’s work, and the beginning of the next decade saw her painting with a new energy.

The Scorpio Series of the mid to late-1990s emphasises Barns-Graham’s innovative nature. Using acrylic, the artist laid out a number of sheets of paper in her studio. She would then choose a colour and mark each sheet with a singular brushstroke, changing colours after each sheet had been marked. Such an experimental process was directly linked to the moment. Although individual works, by painting them simultaneously she created connections between them. Within the wider context of her painting career, this could be read as a physical manifestation of her interest in the relationship between forms found in works such as Tumbling Squares, Blue, Vermillion, Orange Disks on Scarlet and Expanding Forms, Touch Point Series. Brushwork had always been a motif of abstraction for the artist, and in the Scorpio paintings it took centre stage. Just as each form’s placement within the picture plane had previously affected its neighbours, in the Scorpio Series her brushstrokes took on this role. The fluidity and confidence of experimentation in these works has made them some of the finest in her career.

The later prints on display retain the momentum of the Scorpio paintings. Barns-Graham had experimented with linocut and etching earlier in her career, but it was her discovery of screenprint with Kip Gresham in 1991 that marked her true entry into printmaking. Seven years later she was introduced to Carol Robertson and Robert Adam of Graal Press, whose water-based screenprinting inks offered BarnsGraham more flexibility in the medium. As seen by prints such

as November IV, Red Playing Games III and Vision in Time III (cat. 35, 43 and 45), the marks made on the acetate faithfully embody her painting style.

The collected works displayed in this exhibition span four decades, and map Barns-Graham’s developing abstraction.

From 1958, there was an undeniable progression in her style in a variety of manifestations. However, consistent throughout the works on display is their simple statement of the relationships between form, colour and space. The importance of her intended simplicity was summed up by the artist after her 1989 retrospective: “People only have to breathe deeply and look; if there’s anything they enjoy – a shape or a colour – that’s tremendous.”

Dr. Isobel Caroline MacDonald

Notes & references Wilhelmina Barns-Graham quotes in J.P. Hodin, ‘Cornish Renaissance’, in Penguin New Writing (ed. John Lehmann), 1950 Lynne Green, W. Barns-Graham: a studio life (Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2001) Wilhelmina Barns-Graham quoted by Geraldine Prince, ‘A light is revealed after half a century’, Scotland on Sunday, 15 October 1989 Various exhibition catalogues: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: The Late Prints (Gallagher & Turner, 2018) Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, ‘The Joy of Colour’: The Late Prints and Paintings (Bohun Gallery, 2017) Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Survey of Important Works, 1945–1995 (Art First, 2014)

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The paintings for this exhibition have been selected to highlight the main themes in Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s painting from between 1958 and 1998. As her art constantly evolved throughout this period, paintings when taken out of context can appear sometimes to have little connection with what took place before or even perhaps immediately after. But seen as a whole it is possible to see her underlying thoughts and the logic of the directions that were taken. The key characteristic, in its various guises, is her exploration into the interrelationship of colour, form and movement.

During her brief stay in Leeds (1957–58) Wilhelmina Barns-Graham introduced bold black bars into her painting, inspired by the drystone walls that outline the fields of Wharfedale. In 1958 she undertook a visit to Spain, mainly to Barcelona and the Balearics, where she saw the contemporary paintings of local artists such as Joan Miró whose painterly expressive style encouraged her to open up her mark making in her own work. Her paintings from between 1958 and 1963 show a progression away from the use of formal shapes in previous years to a more free-flowing imagery.

Geoffrey Bertram

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WHARFEDALE TO BARCELONA 1958 – 1961

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Lime and Flame, 1958 gouache on paper, 40.8 x 51.5 cm

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Untitled, c.1958 gouache on paper, 16.2 x 17.1 cm

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Untitled (Tarragona Series), 1960 gouache on paper, 58.4 x 91 cm

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In 1963 Barns-Graham purchased a new home and studio in St Ives. Coinciding with this event came a radical shift in the direction of her art with the making of the first paintings that were to become the Things of a Kind in Order and Disorder Series, a major body of work that absorbed her attention for the next decade.

The paintings in Order and Disorder represent the midcareer of Barns-Graham. The new imagery explored colour interacting with simple geometric forms – the square and the circle. Offsetting shapes and colours created visual movement which was then disrupted through introducing irregular rhythms, making disorder out of order; Barns-Graham herself referred to ‘things of a kind in order and chaos’, a description that was appropriated into the picture titles.

The organisation of squares and circles was, though, by no means randomly made. The arrangements are carefully crafted in quite complex constructions, relying on invisible underlying mathematical frameworks. However, unlike Op Art that was being so thoroughly investigated at that time, BarnsGraham’s painting is not so painstakingly repetitive in its formal configurations. She was much more interested in the breakdown of structure. When combined with her use of primary colours, offset against complementary secondaries, the paintings are invested with a vital kinetic energy.

Geoffrey Bertram

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ORDER AND DISORDER 1964 – 1972

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Untitled [Tumbling Squares], c.1964 mixed media on paper, 25.5 x 34.8 cm

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Blue Wheel on Brown II, 1965–1970 oil on hardboard, 25.8 x 25.5 cm

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Blue Disks on Vermillion Band, 1967 oil on panel, 25.4 x 35 cm

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Two Reds and Two Greens, 1968 oil and acrylic on hardboard, 40.6 x 60.8 cm

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Green Held Square 2, 1970 gouache on paper, 36.7 x 36.7 cm

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Two Warms, Two Cools, 1970 gouache on paper, 50.3 x 50.3 cm

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10 Blue Moons 4, 1971 acrylic on paper, 23.2 x 11.1 cm

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11 Blue, Vermillion, Orange Disks on Scarlet, 1972 oil on hardboard, 17.8 x 25.4cm

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The background panels play an important part in defining space and position, as well as direction. They define the nature of the spaces in which the shapes move; those from 1965 to 1970 are, broadly speaking, much flatter and two dimensional than those of the next decade which are more like expansive voids. However, in each instance there is no suggestion of a frame that holds the shapes within a given space, alluding to a continuation of that space well beyond the visible picture plane.

In these years Barns-Graham extended her visual vocabulary.

Movement Over Sand is part of the Touch Point Series where triangular wave forms cross the picture plane, from left to right, suggesting what may be sound or tidal movement. Expanding Panels extends this theme with rhomboids and rectangles, which, when introduced to their own ‘disorder’ in Family and Tribute Series become visually blown away.

Geoffrey Bertram

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A CONTINUATION OF SPACE 1976 – 1982

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12 Untitled [Mirage Series], 1976 gouache on paper, 57 x 38.4 cm

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13 [A Study for Expanding Panels], 1979 gouache on paper, 65.2 x 57.2 cm

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14 [A Study for Day/Night Series], 1980 gouache on paper, 25.2 x 25 cm

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15 Movement over Sand, Touchpoint Series, 1980 gouache on paper, 48 x 48 cm

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16 December No. 5 (Family Series), 1981 oil on hardboard, 19.8 x 27.5 cm

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17 Number 5 (Tribute Series), 1982 oil and pencil on hardboard, 76.1 x 104.4 cm

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The collages that Barns-Graham made initially coincided with periods of ill health during which the ability to work on a large scale was restricted to what she could do sitting down. Small in size, the collages are made up of tiny hole-punched pieces of paper and card, the surfaces built up bit by bit. These reliefs are still concerned with Things of a Kind though more complex in their arrangements and use of colour. They can evoke experiences of landscape but Barns-Graham is usually unspecific regarding from where the genesis of an idea came. Nor is one fully aware of whether one is perceiving something large on a small scale or, conversely, a small subject on a large one. Collage 13 differs from the other three displayed here as it not only extends the design of flying panels being manipulated across the picture surface but it reflects her experience of Orkney, where she first visited in 1984, with its platform strata that extend off the coast of the main island.

Geoffrey Bertram

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THE COLLAGES 1982 – 1985

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18 Collage 80 (Forest), 1982–85 acrylic on card on hardboard, 13.4 x 10 cm

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19 Dawn Movement, 1983 oil and acrylic on paper on board, 13.5 x 19.8 cm

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20 Collage 13, 1985 oil and acrylic on card, 24.9 x 32.2 cm

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21 Collage 37 (Strata), 1985 oil and acrylic on card on hardboard, 13.3 x 9.9 cm

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The late 1980s and early 1990s was a period of further invention. Much of Barns-Graham’s painting was made using gouache or acrylic on paper which seemed to liberate her. At the same time, while preparations were under way for a major retrospective exhibition (organised by the City Art Centre, Edinburgh) Barns-Graham came to be reintroduced to her ‘back catalogue’, some of which re-inspired her. Besides reworkings of the Geoff and Scruffy Series (the original Geoff and Scruffy pictures predate the parameters of this exhibition), [Untitled] 1988 evokes the late 1950s (in the vein of the first paintings exhibited here), while Tierra del Fuego (Timanfaya) re-invents the 1960s Spanish works such as Untitled (Tarragona Series), 1960. Eye of the Storm 2 and Eye of the Storm 3 re-energise the use of the circle, simplified and enlarged to be more a dominant feature, reflecting, as a keen astronomer, celestial observations.

Wind Movement No. 2 highlights Barns-Graham’s use of the Golden Section (a manner of dividing up picture spaces that she had used since the mid 1950s to create spacial structure).

However, in this instance, the lines of spacial division become lines of energy along which blocks of colour recede into a distance, bringing together elements of both the Mirage and Family Series.

Geoffrey Bertram

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LINES OF ENERGY 1988 – 1996

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22 [Untitled], 1988 acrylic on paper, 39 x 57.2 cm

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23 Tierra del Fuego II (Timanfaya), 1990 gouache on paper, 76.5 x 55.3 cm

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24 Eye of the Storm No. 2, 1992 gouache on paper, 56.1 x 75.5 cm

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25 Eye of the Storm No. 3, 1992 gouache on paper, 57 x 76.4 cm

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26 Red and Green Circle, 1993 gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm

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27 Untitled, 1994 oil on canvas, 68.6 x 88.9 cm

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28 Wind Movement No. 2, 1995–96 acrylic on paper, 56.5 x 76 cm

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29 Wind Dance, 1996 acrylic on paper, 39 x 28.2 cm

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Where there were moments that Barns-Graham took inspiration from her past, her new painting in the 1990s was distinctly forward looking. The most significant body of work that she had formed for years, the Scorpio Series reveal a freedom not seen since the late 1950s. It is as if the Scorpio paintings are the embodiment of her entire career, bringing together colour and form in very different yet exciting fashion. She described it as ‘letting rip’, working swiftly, as for her, recognising that she was in her eighties, time was of the essence. The forms are created by the stroke of the brush, are the brush mark itself in its width and density, rather than describing a particular shape. The range of colours is vivacious, a dynamic expression of a joie de vivre. Her late painting confirmed, if it were at all needed, that Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was one of the finest modernist British abstract artists of her generation.

Geoffrey Bertram

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LETTING RIP 1996 – 1998

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30 Scorpio Series 1 No. 12, 1996 acrylic on paper, 56.5 x 76.5 cm

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31 Scorpio Series 2 No. 37, 1997 acrylic on paper, 58 x 77 cm

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32 Scorpio Series 3 (PA No. 1), 1997 acrylic on paper, 57.3 x 76.5 cm

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33 Autumn Series No. 1, 1998 acrylic on paper, 58 x 77 cm

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PRINTS 1972 – 2006

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34 Vermillion Disks into Turquoise Square, 1972 screenprint, 35.7x 36 cm edition of 12

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35 November IV, 1991 screenprint, 56 x 75.5 cm edition of 20

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36 Two Circles on Purple, 1992 lithograph, 60 x 75.5 cm edition of 70

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37 Scorpio I, 1996 etching, 28.7 x 36.9 cm edition of 25

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38 Scorpio II, 1997 etching, 40 x 60 cm edition of 25

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39 Summer, 1998 screenprint, 56 x 76 cm edition of 20

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40 Summer (Blue), 1999 screenprint, 54.7 x 74 cm edition of 100

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41 Eclipse, 1999 etching 28.7 x 36.9 cm edition of 25

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42 Orange & Yellow Playing Games, 1999 screenprint, 28 x 40 cm edition of 75

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43 Red Playing Games III, 2000 screenprint, 28 x 40 cm edition of 75

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44 Two Elements, 2006 screenprint, 57.3 x 56 cm edition of 25

45 Vision in Time III, 2006 screenprint, 76 x 58 cm edition of 25

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WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM’S UNSIGNED AND POSTHUMOUS EDITIONS The Posthumous Editions

Unsigned Editions

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s late flourish as a printmaker came with her introduction to Carol Robertson and Robert Adam of Graal Press. Having begun to re-explore printmaking in 1991 at the age of 79, Barns-Graham, now 87, came to start a new and extraordinary body of work. In the five year period before her death, she produced 66 prints! Of these, 23 were not printed in her lifetime – “Leave these for the moment. You can print these up once I’m dead” she instructed Robertson. Having been mapped and clipped together, the marked up screens were set aside as Barns-Graham was keen to move on to the next designs. Between 2006 and 2007, on the instruction of The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, this collection was printed in small editions of 25 in order to be included in Ann Gunn’s catalogue raisonnée of Barns-Graham’s prints, published that year by Lund Humphries*. Each print is estate stamped on the reverse and the edition number marked on bottom front left corner.

It was not uncommon for Wilhelmina Barns-Graham to sign prints only as they left the studio. This practice was widely held by artists as either they could not be bothered to sign a full edition in one go, or prints were only printed to order (to save money on the printing and resolve issue of storing huge stacks of paper). However, some of her last editions (Wind Series and Water Dance [Porthmeor] Series for example) are unsigned as, although they had been printed and delivered to the studio at the end of 2003, she died before she was able to sign them.

*Ann V Gunn, The Prints of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: A Complete Catalogue (Lund Humphries, 2007)

Right: Scorpio II, 1997, etching, 40 x 60 cm (detail) (cat. 38)

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BIOGRAPHY WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM CBE HRSA HRWA HRSW (1912–2004)

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912. Determining while at school that she wanted to be an artist she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where she enrolled in 1932 and graduated with her diploma in 1937.

At the suggestion of the College’s principal Hubert Wellington, she moved to St Ives in 1940. Early on she met Robert Borlase Smart, Alfred Wallis and Bernard Leach, as well as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo who were living locally at Carbis Bay. She became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and St Ives Society of Artists but was to leave the latter in 1949 when she became one of the founding members of the breakaway Penwith Society of Artists.

She was an early exhibitor of the significant Crypt Group.

Her peers in St Ives include Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Roger Hilton and John Wells, among others.

Barns-Graham’s history is bound up with St Ives where she lived throughout her life, and it is the place where she experienced her first great successes as an artist. Following her travels to the Grindelwald Glacier, Switzerland in 1949 she embarked on a series of paintings and drawings which caught the attention of some of the most significant critics and curators of the day. In 1951 she won the Painting Prize in the Penwith Society of Arts in Cornwall Festival of Britain Exhibition and went on to have her first London solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in 1952. She was included in many of the important exhibitions on pioneering British abstract art that took place in the 1950s. Her first solo exhibition in Scotland was with The Scottish Gallery (part of Aitken Dott & Son) in 1956.

Left: Wilhelmina in her Barnaloft studio, St Ives, 1987

In 1960 Barns-Graham inherited a family home near St Andrews which initiated a new phase in her life. From this moment she divided her time between the two coastal communities, simultaneously establishing herself as much as a Scottish artist as a St Ives one. Balmungo House was to become the heart of her professional life and from where she engaged with the Scottish art world. In 1987 she established the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust which works to advance awareness of her life and work, while using her legacy to support young people and other individuals to fulfil their potential in the visual arts.

Barns-Graham exhibited consistently throughout her career, in private and public galleries. Though not short of exposure throughout the 1960s and 1970s, her next greatest successes did not come until much later in life. Important exhibitions of her work at Edinburgh City Art Centre (a touring retrospective in 1989), Tate St Ives (1999/2000 and 2005) and the publication of the first monograph on her life and work, Lynne Green’s W. Barns-Graham: a studio life (2001; 2nd updated and revised edition 2011), did much to change critical and public perceptions of her achievements and confirmed her as one of the key contributors of the St Ives School, and as a significant British modernist. She was made a CBE in 2001, and received four honorary doctorates (St Andrews 1992, Plymouth 2000, Exeter 2001 and Heriot Watt Universities 2003). Her work is found in all major public collections throughout the UK. She died in St Andrews on 26 January 2004.

For further information and full biography visit www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk/The-Artist/Chronology

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Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition WILHELMINA BARNS-GRAHAM A Journey Through Four Decades 30 October – 26 November 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Scottish Gallery would like to thank the contributing writers Kate Downie, Dr. Isobel MacDonald and Geoffrey Bertram. Thanks also to Rob Airey and Ross Irving at the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust for their sourcing of archive photographs.

Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/barnsgraham ISBN: 978-1-912900-10-7 Designed by Kenneth Gray / www.kennethgray.co.uk Photography by Andy Phillipson / livewireimage.com Printed by Barr Colour Printers All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

Cover: Blue Wheel on Brown II, 1965–1970, oil on hardboard, 25.8 x 25.5 cm (detail) (cat. 5)