(In)visibility

Dr Clare Nadal, Assistant Curator- Sculpture, Leeds Museums and Galleries

Keywords: Women artists, Tachisme, abstraction, British art, regional

This article was developed out of a conference paper and catalogue essay related to the exhibition project The Expressive Mark at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds. The exhibition, originally due to open in April 2020, aimed to explore the work of British painters who were practising during the second half of the twentieth century when the influence of Abstract Expressionism was percolating across the Atlantic. In November 2019 at the inaugural event of the Post-War Painting in Regional Collections British Art Network Research Group, Debating the Status of Post-War Painting, I presented a paper on the then forthcoming exhibition. Questions following my paper noted the gender bias in the exhibition and the lack of work by women. This feedback prompted me to reflect on two questions. Firstly, who were some of the other women producing abstract painting in Britain during the post-war period besides the handful of known names, such as Gillian Ayres (1930–2018), Sandra Blow (1925–2006), and Prunella Clough (1919–1999)? Secondly, where might we be able to find evidence of their work, whether in collections or exhibition histories, and what were the networks and infrastructures that provided them with the support to produce (and exhibit) their work?

In November 2021, some eighteen months delayed due to the COVID pandemic, The Expressive Mark opened in Leeds. Of the thirteen artists selected, only three were women –Ayres, Blow, and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912–2004). The accompanying catalogue included an introductory essay by the exhibition’s curator Anne Goodchild alongside five essays focusing on individual artists – my own essay on Blow being the only one to focus on a woman. [1] A high proportion of the artworks in the exhibition were on loan from regional collections, including the little-known painting Abstract No. 18 (c. 1966) by Blow from Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle. The painting is not reproduced in any of the catalogues of Blow’s work, nor in Michael Bird’s 2005 monograph – the only monograph currently in existence for the artist. According to Art UK, whose programme of digitisation has been critical in making regional collections more widely accessible, there are a further twenty works by Blow spread across UK regional galleries and university collections.[2] However, few of these regionally-located works have ever been reproduced in printed scholarship on Blow, and as such her work is almost entirely discussed in relation to the sixteen of her works that are held in national collections or those in private ownership.

As this one example demonstrates, our regional collections provide an important – and largely untapped – resource for locating post-war abstract painting by women.[3] Taking the example of The Expressive Mark as a starting point, this article seeks not only to provide some answers to the questions posed above, but to propose that regional collections form a vital role in redressing narratives around gender and post-war abstract painting in Britain. Writing some five years after the initial research and planning for the exhibition took place, it questions how – or indeed, if – scholarship and exhibition making on women within post-war abstract painting in Britain has now shifted.

Exhibiting post-war abstract painting in Britain – now and then

As recently as 2016, it was not uncommon to see group exhibitions of post-war British art staged with an all-male line up, as in the inaugural exhibition at the Heong Gallery, Cambridge, Generation Painting 1955-65: British Art from the Collection of Sir Alan Bowness. In its choice of timeframe, the exhibition paid homage to a previous exhibition Painting and Sculpture of a Decade: ’54-64’ at the Tate Gallery, for which Bowness had been one of the selectors. Inevitably Generation Painting reflected the remit of Bowness’ own collecting, while the narrative presented hearkened back to the 1964 exhibition, which had included the work of only nine women out of a total of 170 artists.[4] While the accompanying symposium sought to broaden the focus to include the work of both women and artists of the Commonwealth, the exhibition itself was exclusively white and male. The same year the Royal Academy of Arts presented what Griselda Pollock has termed ‘an infamous exhibition of an imbalanced “Abstract Expressionism”’, in which women artists were greatly outnumbered by men.[5] In 2023 Pollock reflected that ‘only now’ have we ‘witnessed a flurry of corrective exhibitions challenging the whitened, gender-exclusive version of the art of the twentieth century by which museums and scholars continuously misled the public’.[6]

The ‘flurry’ of women-only group exhibitions that Pollock references have included, among others: Elles font l’abstraction at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2021; Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945, an Arts Council Collection touring exhibition staged from 2021 to 2023; Abstract-Gesture-Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-70 at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2023 and most recently, Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970 at Turner Contemporary, Margate, 2024. Moreover, other group exhibitions of twentieth-century art have sought to broaden their focus to include a wider selection of artists, such as the 2022 exhibition Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945-1965 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. This exhibition noted the contributions of ‘those who came to Britain both during and after the war: those fleeing Nazism and migrants from the corners of the now crumbling Empire […] along with those of a number of female artists, often also marginalised and misunderstood in an overtly male arena’.[7] However, it is predominantly through the mode of exhibition-making and its companion – the exhibition catalogue – that we are witnessing this shift; far fewer monographic publications have as yet appeared. Texts unconnected to exhibitions tend to most often be trade press books; as art critic Eliza Goodpasture has noted, ‘“women artists” are trendy’ but this mostly manifests itself in ‘covetable pink coffee-table books’. [8]

For Goodpasture, few of these titles ‘offer anything truly original or truly feminist’. [9] Perhaps then it is of little surprise that the list of women representing post-war abstract painting in Britain in these ‘corrective’ exhibitions over the past five years has not greatly diverged from those featured in The Expressive Mark in 2019. In Postwar Modern the work of Ayres, Clough, Magda Cordell (1921–2008), Mary Martin (1907–1969), and Franciszka Themerson (1907–1988) was included. A not dissimilar selection consisting of Ayres, Blow, Lilian Holt (1898–1983), Margaret Mellis (1914–2009), Themerson, and Elsa Vaudrey (1905–1990) made up the British component of Action-Gesture-Paint.[10] In Elles font l’abstraction, Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884), Tess Jaray >(b.1937), Marlow Moss (1889-1958), Bridget Riley (b.1931), and Helen Saunders (1885-1963) featured. [11] Of course, these exhibitions did not purport to focus exclusively on post-war abstract painting by women in Britain, which perhaps explains the limited list of names. To date there have been no survey exhibitions (or texts) on women’s painting in post-war Britain specifically, as there have been for sculpture, or for abstract painting by women in other countries, such as America.[12] Both the exhibition and catalogue of Elles font abstraction, for example, were largely Franco-American leaning, following previous trends in scholarship where post-war abstract painting is primarily represented through artists of the New York school.[13] There is the sense then, that, as these exhibitions uphold the myth that British post-war abstraction was less progressive than in America, likewise they overlook women’s contribution to post-war abstract painting in Britain.

While Goodpasture and others have called into question the need for – or even effectiveness – of all-women exhibitions in today’s twenty-first century climate, arguably one of their advantages is the ability to introduce visitors to women artists who are not usually featured in mixed-gender exhibitions.[14] At the same time, the somewhat limited range of artists included in these recent exhibitions seems to owe something to the established exhibition histories of the post-war period itself. In histories of post-war abstraction, 1957 is acknowledged as a significant year for exhibitions of abstract art in Britain, following in the footsteps of the Tate Gallery’s 1956 exhibition Modern Art in the United States, which is generally credited with first introducing Abstract Expressionism to a UK audience.[15] In his introduction to Recent British Painting: Peter Stuyvesant Collection (1967), the late Sir Alan Bowness noted four examples: Lawrence Alloway’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) exhibition Statements: A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, which opened in January 1957; Metavisual Tachiste Abstract: Painting in England To-Day, organised by the Redfern Gallery in April 1957; Dimensions, organised jointly by Alloway and Toni del Renzio at the O’Hana Gallery in December 1957; and, finally, the opening of the first John Moores Prize at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in November 1957.[16] Surprisingly, not all of Bowness’ examples were London-based exhibitions, with the Liverpool-based John Moores Prize also gaining a mention.[17]

The above four examples are generally regarded as crucial to the history of exhibitions of abstract art in Britain and thus provide a key starting point to begin to explore women’s presence in exhibition histories of the period, at both a national and a regional level. Statements and Dimensions both sought to present a range of practices, with the former aiming to display a ‘cross-section of the whole field’ as Alloway termed it, while the latter was divided into the ‘geometric’ and the ‘painterly’. [18] Of the twenty-one artists included in Statements, four were women, with Hepworth and Martin’s work being used to demonstrate Constructivist and geometric tendencies in abstraction, while the inclusion of Blow and Cordell reflected the prevalence of informal or gestural practices. All four women went on to exhibit in Dimensions, which also included the work of Ayres. [19]

Several of the artists in Statements and Dimensions also participated in Metavisual Tachiste Abstract, including Blow, Alan Davie (1920–2014), Terry Frost (1915–2003), Patrick Heron (1920–1999), Roger Hilton (1911–1975) and Bryan Wynter (1915–1975). This list has a particularly strong St Ives emphasis, perhaps little surprising given Patrick Heron’s role in the organisation of the exhibition.[20] While the catalogue acknowledged a diversity of practices, from the ‘mathematically precise “architecture” of Constructivism’ to the ‘lyrical emotionalism of “Tachisme”’, it was with the latter camp that the exhibition seemed to most clearly identify, with ‘Action painting’ singled out as the most ‘novel’ of the tendencies on display.[21] Women were once again greatly outnumbered with only Blow, Ayres, and the now little-known painter Dorothy Bordass (1905–1992) included.[22] The male-dominated nature of these exhibitions offers some explanation as to why women’s inclusion in exhibitions and scholarship today is still limited. The recurring presence of Blow and Ayres in these early exhibitions has no doubt helped to secure their legacy today. [23] By contrast, time has been less kind to Cordell. Although included in Statements and Dimensions, in addition to having solo exhibitions at the ICA and the Hanover Gallery during her lifetime, Cordell’s work has been largely neglected in the writing of art history, although recent scholarship by art historians Giulia Smith and Ben Highmore has begun to shift this narrative.[24] Of the women included in Statements, Dimensions and Metavisual Tachiste Abstract, only Hepworth was selected for the later 1964 survey exhibition Painting & Sculpture of a Decade at the Tate Gallery, demonstrating the even more prohibitive nature of national institutions for women.[25]

Only two works by Cordell are held in UK public collections – both in the Tate. Nevertheless, she has often been represented in publications and exhibitions through a small selection of works, in particular from her Presences and Figure series of the late 1950s. [26] Examples from the latter series were included in the 2022 Postwar Modern exhibition. Part of the reason for this limited focus is because none of Cordell’s paintings from the early 1950s now survive. Today these works are only accessible through black and white photographic reproduction.[27] Yet, in 1956 Cordell was described by Robert Melville as ‘the only artist of consequence whose work was directly influenced by the [Opposing Forces] show’, the 1953 exhibition of French action painting mounted by the ICA.[28] As Highmore has noted, at the time Melville was writing ‘it seems that there was some agreement (among a handful of critic and editors at least) that Cordell was the London representative of action painting’.[29] If Melville saw Cordell as the British representative of the new French painting, for Alloway she was also the link with New York. As he commented in Statements, ‘Cordell […] looks towards New York […] rather than towards Paris. The American influence on her work antedates that of the others mentioned’. [30] Cordell’s 1956 exhibition at the Hanover Gallery coincided with Modern Art in the United States at the Tate Gallery, which no doubt further encouraged such comparisons. [31] In a review of Cordell’s Hanover Gallery exhibition, critic Neville Wallis compared her work to that of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), arguing that 'she stains and bespatters her canvases with more conscious intention, however, than Jackson Pollock, her doodles sometimes assuming a semblance of women or long-necked creatures’. [32] Certainly, the abstracted form of Figure (Woman) (1956-7), one of many torsos that Cordell painted during these years, offers comparisons with both the work of Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) and the dripping techniques employed by Pollock in Number 1 (1948), the painting by which he was represented in the Tate 1956 exhibition.

If 1950s critics saw Cordell as the British link between both Paris and New York, her subsequent marginalisation from art historical narratives – ‘who now remembers the painter Magda Cordell?’ one critic asked in 1990 – is, as Highmore rightly notes, ‘more troubling’ than the ‘(depressingly familiar) story of marginalisation and subsequent exclusion’. [33] Despite the gender biases evident in the exhibitions discussed above, Cordell was visible in the 1950s through both solo and group exhibitions. Her marginalisation instead came at the point of the writing of art history, demonstrating the need to move beyond simply ‘reinserting’ women into art historical and curatorial narratives, but to fundamentally challenge the basis of such narratives. [34]

If 1950s critics saw Cordell as the British link between both Paris and New York, her subsequent marginalisation from art historical narratives – ‘who now remembers the painter Magda Cordell?’ one critic asked in 1990 – is, as Highmore rightly notes, ‘more troubling’ than the ‘(depressingly familiar) story of marginalisation and subsequent exclusion’. [33] Despite the gender biases evident in the exhibitions discussed above, Cordell was visible in the 1950s through both solo and group exhibitions. Her marginalisation instead came at the point of the writing of art history, demonstrating the need to move beyond simply ‘reinserting’ women into art historical and curatorial narratives, but to fundamentally challenge the basis of such narratives. [34]

As art historian Margaret Garlake has noted, Metavisual Tachiste Abstract included the work of nine artists who would subsequently exhibit at the New Vision Centre Gallery which was founded in 1956 by painters Denis Bowen (1921–2006), Halima Nalecz (1914–2008), and Frank Avray Wilson (1914–2009).[35] Famous for being ‘fiercely non-figurative, violently tachiste, remarkably international’, the New Vision Centre Gallery gained a reputation for showing young non-figurative artists with a special interest in tachisme (a term derived from the French word ‘tache’, meaning to splash or stain, used to describe non-geometric abstract painters in France) and art informel (a spontaneous abstract painting that emerged as the European equivalent of Abstract Expressionism). [36] Of the women included in the Redfern exhibition, both Ayres and Bordass later exhibited at the New Vision Centre Gallery.[37] Like many artists of her generation, Bordass made frequent visits to St Ives in the 1950s. Here she was one of several women – also including Fanchon Fröhlich (1927–2016) and Nancy Wynne-Jones (1922–2006) – to study painting at the St Peter’s Loft painting school run by Peter Lanyon (1918–1964).[38] Bordass shared a studio at the Porthmeor Studios with the artist John Barclay (1884–1964) and permanently relocated to St Ives in 1958.[39] Several of her works exhibited in Metavisual Tachiste Abstract draw upon Cornish place names, including St Ives Harbour and Porthmeor, while others refer to natural phenomena, such as Vernal Equinox and Rain on Wind. These might be read in relation to the tachiste drawings and paintings produced by Hepworth in 1957 and 1958, which similarly utilise titles referencing the seasons and natural elements, such as Figures (Summer) Yellow and White] Works in a similar vein were also included in Wynne-Jones’ 1964 solo exhibition at the New Vision Centre Gallery, again drawing on titles relating to landscape and the elements, such as Headland and Dawn Dance. Something of a connection between tachisme and landscape seems to here emerge around these various women working in West Cornwall, though sadly many of the works themselves are now only known through black and white illustration in exhibition catalogues of the time.

Bordass went on to have a solo exhibition at the New Vision Centre Gallery in 1958, the year after Metavisual Tachiste Abstract. Although much has been written about the Gallery in terms of its support of international artists – over its ten-year lifespan, it showed artists from twenty-nine countries, with an emphasis on those from the Commonwealth – its support of women has not yet been explored.[41] Similarly, Halima Nalecz’s role at the Gallery has often been overlooked at the expense of her more well-known male co-founders. This is despite the fact that Nalecz also had solo exhibitions at the Gallery in 1957 and 1959. With a policy to present exhibitions of young and unknown non-figurative artists, many of which were also first solo or first London exhibitions, the New Vision Centre Gallery offered both solo and group exhibiting opportunities for many women, who, alongside Ayres, Bordass and Nalecz herself also included names such as Anthea Alley (1927–1993), Nancy Horrocks (1900–1989), Suzanne Rodillon (1916–1988), Mildred Wohl (1906–1977), and Wynne-Jones.[42] In 1957 Nalecz established her own gallery, the Drian Galleries, which similarly supported the work of many women, including those associated with the New Vision Centre Gallery, such as Rodillon and Jeannette Jackson.[43] In 1963 the Drian presented the first retrospective exhibition of Themerson’s work.[44] Both the New Vision Centre Gallery and the Drian also hosted exhibitions from the Women’s International Art Club (WIAC). [45] Many of the women discussed in this article were either members of or exhibited with WIAC at various points.[46]

Although the New Vision Centre Gallery was London based, in August 1957 a northern outpost known as the Univision Gallery was formed in the basement of the Royal Court Grill in Newcastle’s Bigg Market by tachiste painters Scott Dobson (1918–1986), Ross Hickling, Harry Lord, and Bill Smith, at the suggestion of Denis Bowen. Concerned with the lack of opportunities to see or exhibit innovatory work outside of London, the Gallery aimed, in the words of an early reviewer, to display ‘the work of the intellectual and emotive factions of abstract art’ which was otherwise largely absent in Tyneside.[47] Ayres, alongside Bowen himself, David Chapin, and John Coplans (1920–2003), was included in a group exhibition at the Gallery in February 1958. The Univision Gallery’s aim, to provide a platform to exhibit innovatory abstract art outside of London, was also shared by the John Moores Painting Prize, which was established three months later in Liverpool in November 1957. Despite the differences between the artist-led avant-garde Univision Gallery and the municipal Walker Art Gallery, both shared a common belief in the importance of de-centering the London-provinces model. In a letter to the Sunday Times in 1957 Moores expressed his concern at the ‘plight of provincial museums and art galleries’ and his belief ‘that their decline has something to do with the concentration of art shows, art criticisms and the like in London’.[48] By contrast, the Prize aimed to ‘give Merseyside the chance to see an exhibition of painting and sculpture embracing the best and most vital work being done today through the country’ and ‘to encourage contemporary artists, particularly the young and progressive’.[49]

Due to its open-submission format and support of younger artists, the Prize has provided a platform for unknown or emerging artists and thus is an important source for tracing painting by women produced during this period. As curator Charlotte Keenan McDonald notes, ‘while few women have won first prize, many of the 20th century’s most important women artists have been associated with the John Moores. The competition’s early years saw frequent submissions by Sandra Blow, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Tess Jaray, and Laetitia Yhap’.[50] Only five women have won the first prize to date, including Martin who was awarded joint winner with Richard Hamilton (1922-2011) in 1969, Lisa Milroy (b.1959), Sarah Pickstone (b.1965), Rose Wylie (b.1934), Jacqui Hallam, and Kathryn Maple (b.1989). Others have been awarded smaller prizes: in 1957 Fell (1931–1979) won the second prize in the junior section while Margaret E. Evans (1889–1981) was one of ten artists in the junior section to be given a prize of £25.[51] Following in the footsteps of Fell and Evans, Anne Redpath (1895–1965) was awarded a prize of £100 in 1959, while in 1961 Blow won the second prize, and Alley received a prize of £50. Other women awarded small prizes include Eleanor Brady, Rita Donagh (b.1939), Jaray, Riley, and Jean Spencer (1942–1998), while Ayres also won the second prize in 1982. [52]

The list of women exhibitors in the 1957 prize, which includes Shearer Armstrong (1894–1983), Redpath and Themerson in addition to the prize-winners mentioned above, is notable for how it differs to that of the women included in Statements, Dimensions, and Metavisual Tachiste Abstract. [53] The women in the former exhibitions were mostly London or Cornwall based – as in the case of Hepworth and Bordass.[54] Although Fell, Evans, and Themerson were all London based, Redpath lived in Edinburgh, and Armstrong in St Ives. Moreover, despite spending much of the latter part of her life in London, today Fell is most readily associated with Cumbria, perhaps little surprising given the recurring presence of the Cumbrian landscape in her work. Similarly, Redpath is typically characterised as a ‘Scottish painter’. As such, there is a distinctive ‘regional flavour’ to the 1957 John Moores list, which is largely absent from the aforementioned London exhibitions, with the exception of those artists with Cornish connections.

Although both Fell and Redpath have artworks in UK national collections, the majority of Fell’s work is housed in regional collections, particularly in the northwest of England, while most of Redpath’s paintings are in Scottish collections. There are only two works by Armstrong in UK public collections, both in regional collections in Cornwall, perhaps little surprising given the artist’s St Ives connection. Though undated, these are stylistically akin to Rock Pools, the work Armstrong exhibited in 1957, conveying an abstract understanding of landscape common to art produced in St Ives in the early 1950s. [55] Of the four works by Evans in UK public collections, three are in university art collections, two being examples of student work that were acquired while Evans was studying at the Slade School of Art. Her prize-winning painting Blue Still Life, exhibited in the 1957 John Moores Prize, was subsequently acquired for the Walker Art Gallery’s permanent collection.

Collecting post-war abstract painting – the regional context

In addition to Blue Still Life, the establishment of the John Moores Prize has led to many other acquisitions for the Walker Art Gallery’s collection. Throughout the history of the prize, it has largely been policy to acquire the first prize work. [56] This on its own would not have led to a significant boost in the Walker’s holdings of paintings by women given the few women to have won the first prize. However, during the early years Moores himself purchased several prizewinning works, including non-first prize work. As a result, Fell’s Houses near Number Five Pit (1957) from the inaugural exhibition, Blow’s Sphere Alabster (1961) – the first work by a woman to win a prize in the open section – and Jaray’s Cupola Green (1963), which received an honourable mention in the junior section, have all been acquired for the collection. Indeed, more acquisitions from the Prize were made during its early days in the late 1950s and 1960s than in recent years. [57] Works submitted but not selected for Prize exhibitions have also been acquired for the collection as gifts. In 1959 Wynne-Jones submitted the painting Winter Landscape but the work was not accepted. [58] However, it was later acquired by the Walker Gallery as a gift from the artist. Additionally, the John Moores Prize has led to further acquisitions for other public collections in the region. Ayres regularly submitted to the Prize and had works selected for the 1961, 1963, 1965, and 1967 iterations respectively, in addition to later winning the second prize in 1982. In 1967 her painting Fountain was selected for exhibition, and was then acquired by the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool the following year. Likewise, although Ayres’ 1982 award at the John Moores was not a purchase prize, the Walker Gallery did later purchase her painting Aeolus in 1987, currently the only work by the artist in the collection. The same year that Ayres won the second prize, a touring exhibition of her work was shown at Touchstone Rochdale, where her painting Mons Graupius (1979/80) was included and subsequently purchased for the Rochdale collection the same year. [59]

Similarly, following her success with Sphere Alabaster in the 1961 Prize, Blow was invited to exhibit in the 1965 exhibition. Two years later in 1967 two of her paintings No.1 and No.III (1966) were subsequently acquired for the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Liverpool.[60] Other works by Blow were also acquired by regional collections in the northwest during the 1960s, including Number Seventeen (1961) which was purchased by Gallery Oldham in 1962 and Abstract No. 18 (c.1966), bought by Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle in 1966. These examples demonstrate the important link between exhibiting and collecting, with both regional exhibitions and touring exhibitions providing an opportunity for paintings by women to be acquired by both the Walker Art Gallery and other collections in Liverpool and the northwest more widely.

Situating women within post-war abstract painting

This article opened with two questions and a proposal: who were some of the other women working in post-war abstract painting and where can we find evidence of their work? And how has scholarship and exhibition making on this subject shifted or changed? It was my proposal that regional collections could provide a key resource in answering these questions. This article has aimed to identify potential sources that might be utilised to present a more complete and representative account of women’s contribution to post-war abstract painting in Britain. These include the exhibition histories of fringe galleries such as the New Vision Centre Gallery and the Drian Galleries, which offered opportunities for young artists, women and those from outside the UK. Many of the women who exhibited in these spaces were also involved in the Women’s International Art Club. Art school and education contexts also provide fruitful evidence, in particular St Peter’s Loft in St Ives, the painting school run by Lanyon, where Bordass, Fröhlich, and Wynne-Jones were all students. Exhibitions and events held outside of London are another important source of information, including small gallery spaces such as the Univision Gallery in Newcastle as well as municipal galleries such as the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, where the John Moores Prize was established. There is evidence of crossover between the London fringe galleries and the John Moores Prize, with women such as Alley, Ayres, Themerson, and Wynne-Jones exhibiting at both. The open call format of the John Moores Prize was significant in encouraging a wider spectrum of artists than seen in many of the survey exhibitions of the period, where often the same few names repeatedly appear. Although few women have won the first prize across the John Moores history, the Prize has nonetheless led to the acquisition of abstract painting by women for both the Walker’s own permanent collection and for other public collections in the region.

In this way, regional collections now offer the potential to open up new possibilities for research on women working in post-war abstract painting. For women whose work has not been collected by national institutions, as in the case of Armstrong, Bordass or Evans, regional collections take on an even more significant role. As art historian and curator Alice Correia argues, ‘regional collections have arguably more diverse collections than some museums with a “national” designation, and as such have the potential to counter and expand the mainstream understanding of what British art is’. [61] It is imperative that we continue to widen the narrative of British art, especially in relation to women. Although we are witnessing a greater number of exhibitions focusing on women and abstraction than ever before, such exhibitions (and their accompanying catalogues) still tend to mostly focus on a similar list of limited names, which largely replicate survey exhibitions held in London in the 1950s and 1960s. With the aid of the Art UK project, we now have the opportunity to interrogate our regional collections in more detail, and in doing so, develop and expand narratives on post-war painting, not only in relation to women’s contributions, but to that of other marginalised groups.

Acknowledgements

This article is dedicated to the memory of the late curator and art historian Anne Goodchild, curator of The Expressive Mark. I am grateful to Anne and to Layla Bloom at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery for inviting me to contribute an essay on Sandra Blow to the exhibition catalogue, as well as to present an early version of this paper at the accompanying symposium. A Scholarly Research Grant from the Association of Art History supported a research trip to St Ives, where the insights of Jason and Julia Lilley at the Penwith Society of Arts and Janet Axten and Jason Sugden at the St Ives Archive proved invaluable. Finally, my thanks to Sophie Hatchwell and Hana Leaper for the invitation to write this article and for their insightful comments and suggestions.

This article is a result of a writing commission from the ‘Post War Painting in Regional Collections’ Research Group, a sub-set of the British Art Network, which is jointly overseen by Tate and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Tate. We are grateful to Tate, the Paul Mellon Centre, and Arts Council England for funding this work.

Notes

[1] The other four essays were all authored by male scholars. Anne Goodchild, The Expressive Mark, exhibition catalogue, Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, (Leeds, 2021).

[2] Unless otherwise stated, all such statistics in this article are based on information from the Art UK online database.

[3] The example of Blow is not an anomaly. Similarly, Gillian Ayres has fifty-five works listed on Art UK, thirty-three of which are in regional collections or hospital trusts, yet almost all of the works illustrated in Mel Gooding’s 2001 text on the artist are in national or private collections. Mel Gooding, Gillian Ayres (Aldershot, 2001).

[4] The few women included in Painting and Sculpture of a Decade: ’54- ‘64 were Lee Bontecu, Marisol (Escobar), Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Hepworth, Louise Nevelson, Marta Pan, Germaine Richier, Bridget Riley and Viera de Silva. See Painting and Sculpture of a Decade: ‘54-‘64, (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1964). As Lisa Tickner notes, ‘No Sandra Blow, Gillian Ayres or Sheila Fell […] no Prunella Clough, Gillian Wise, Mary Martin, Elisabeth Frink or Jann Howarth’. Lisa Tickner, London’s New Scene: Art and Culture in the 1960s, (New Haven, 2020), p.116.

[5] Griselda Pollock, ‘Between a Rock and Hard Place: Strategies for Histories of Abstraction with Women on your Mind’, Action-Gesture-Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction, 1940-70, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Gallery, (London, 2023), p.20. On the other side of the Atlantic, in 2016 the Denver Art Museum mounted the exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism, indicating that the situation in America was at least starting to become more progressive. Joan Marter, Women of Abstract Expressionism, Exhibition Catalogue, Denver Art Museum, (Denver, 2016).

[6] Pollock, (2023), p.15.

[7] Jane Alison, ‘Introduction’, in Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain, 1945-1965 (London: Prestel in association with Barbican Art Gallery, 2022), p.11.

[8] Eliza Goodpasture, ‘The Problem with the ‘Look, I Found Her’ Trend in Art History’, Art Review, 17 November 2022 https://artreview.com/the-problem-with-the-look-i-found-her-trend-in-art-history/ [Accessed 19 July 2023].

[9] Ibid.

[10] Other women included in Postwar Modern working outside of the scope of abstract painting included Shirley Baker, Jean Cooke, Eva Frankfurther, Elisabeth Frink, Kim Lim, Lee Miller, Lucie Rie, Sylvia Sleigh and Alison (and Peter) Smithson. Alison (2022)

[11]Christine Macel and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska, Women in Abstraction (London, 2021).

[12] For recent texts on women’s contribution to British sculpture, see Breaking the Mould: Sculpture by Women since 1945 (London, 2020) and Pauline Rose, Working Against the Grain: Women Sculptors in Britain, c.1885-1950 (Liverpool, 2020). Texts on women’s contribution to American abstract painting include the aforementioned Women of Abstract Expressionism (see op. cit.) and Mary Gabriel’s group biography Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartington, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art (New York, 2018).

[13] In 2010 Katy Deepwell noted that ‘the contribution of women artists to modernist movements has been reassessed but the most common examples cited were women artists from continental Europe or the USA’. Katy Deepwell, Women Artists between the Wars: ‘A fair field and no favour’ (Manchester, 2010), p.1.

[14]Eliza Goodpasture, ‘The Problem with All-Women Exhibitions’, Art Review, 22 February 2023 [Accessed 23 August 2024].

[15] For more on the Modern Art in the United States exhibition, see Frank Spicer, ‘Modern Art in the United States, 1956’ in Modern American Art at Tate 1945-1980, Tate Research Publication [Accessed 1 April 2023].

[16] Alan Bowness, ‘Introduction’, in Recent British Painting: Peter Stuyvesant Collection (London, 1967), p.12. Martin Harrison also discusses the three London exhibitions in Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties (London, 2002), pp.150-2.

[17] Founded by the Liverpool businessman and philanthropist Sir John Moores, the Prize was described on its opening as by the Manchester Guardian as ‘a landmark in British art’ – in part simply in being located outside of London. Qtd. in Charlotte Keenan McDonald, ‘A Landmark in British Art: 60 Years of the John Moores Painting Prize’, in John Moores Painting Prize: Celebrating 60 Years (Liverpool, 2018), p.3.

[18] Lawrence Alloway, ‘Introductory Notes’, in Statements: A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956 (London, 1957), n.p. Dimensions (London: O’Hana Gallery, 1957), n.p.

[19] Thirty-five artists were represented in Dimensions; only five of these were women.

[20] The exhibition was selected by Rex Nan Kivell and Harry Tatlock Miller, advised by Patrick Heron. The exhibition title itself was suggested by Heron’s wife, Delia Heron. See Martin Harrison, Metavisual Tachiste Abstract: Painting in England Today – A Fiftieth Anniversary (London, 2007), n.p.

[21] Denys Sutton, ‘Preface’, in Metavisual Tachiste Abstract (London, 1957), n.p.

[22] Bordass, along with Ayres and Blow, was included in the Redfern Gallery’s 2007 exhibition marking the fiftieth anniversary of Metavisual Tachiste Abstract. See op. cit.

[23] Ayres was also the only woman selected for the 1960 Situation: An Exhibition of British Abstract Painting at the Royal Society of British Artists.

[24] Cordell had a solo exhibition of her monotypes and collages at the ICA in 1955 and of her paintings at the Hanover Gallery, London in 1956. In 2002 her work was included in the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties (see op. cit.). Smith’s 2015 article provided a much-needed addition to the otherwise scant secondary literature on the artist. See Giulia Smith, ‘Painting that Grows Back: Futures Past and the Ur-feminist Art of Magda Cordell McHale, 1955–1961’, British Art Studies, Issue 1, <https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-01/gsmith> [Accessed 1 April 2023]. Cordell’s work is also included in Ben Highmore’s The Art of Brutalism: Rescuing Hope from Catastrophe in 1950s Britain (New Haven and London, 2017). Cordell was included in the Postwar Modern exhibition at the Barbican in 2022 and her painting Figure (Woman) (1956-7) featured in the recent Tate Britain collection rehang in 2023.

[25] Hepworth and Bridget Riley were the only British women included in the ‘54-’64 exhibition. For further details, see op. cit.

[26] This period is the focus of Smith, Harrison and Highmore’s texts.

[27] A black and white reproduction of Cordell’s Grid Painting c.1953 is illustrated in Harrison, (2002), p.140.

[28] Robert Melville, ‘Action Painting: New York, Paris, London’, Ark 18, 1956, pp.30-33, qtd. Harrison (2002)

[29] Highmore, (2016), p.159.

[30] Alloway, ‘Introductory Notes’, n.p.

[31] Alloway also provided the introductory text for Cordell’s exhibition at the Hanover Gallery.

[32] Neville Wallis, ‘Memorials’, The Observer, 29 Jan. 1956, qtd. in Highmore, (2016) p.157.

[33] John Russell Taylor, ‘Flashback to the Fearless Fifties’, The Times, 16 Feb. 1990, p.16, qtd. in Highmore, (2016), p.155.

[34] As Griselda Pollock warned in 1988, simply adding women to art history ‘would be a straitjacket in which our studies of women artists would reproduce and secure the normative status of men artists and men’s art’. Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art, (London 1988, repr. 2000) p.1.

[35] Margaret Garlake, New Vision: 56-66 (Tyne & Wear, 1986), p.17. These are Gillian Ayres, Dorothy Bordass, Denis Bowen, John Coplans, Paul Feiler, John Milnes-Smith, Ralph Rumney, Ian Stephenson and Frank Avray Wilson.

[36] Stephen Bone, Guardian, 2 Dec. 1957, qtd. in Garlake 1986., p.3.Carmen Juliá, ‘You Saw it Here First’, Tate Etc, 21 Feb. 2012 [Accessed 5 March 2022].

[37] Ayres was included in the third exhibition of the New Vision Group (which preceded the establishment of the Centre) held at the Coffee House in Northumberland Avenue.

[38] For more on these artists see Hana Leaper and Anna Roberts, ‘Fanchon Fröhlich: The Liverpudlian Polymath’, Abstract Thinking: Fanchon Fröhlich and her Contemporaries, (Liverpool 2024) David Whittaker, St Ives Allure: Engagements with Art and Place in West Cornwall (Cornwall, 2018) St Peter’s Loft was established by Lanyon and William Redgrave in 1955. As Chris Stephens has noted, ‘a number of modern-minded painters with more professional ambitions were attracted by Lanyon’s tuition.’ In this way the school differed from the tradition painting schools in artists’ colonies which tended to attract mostly amateur painters. See Chris Stephens, St Ives: The Art and the Artists (London 2018), p.212.

[39] Information from the artist file on Dorothy Bordass at St Ives Archive.

[[40]Matthew Gale and Chris Stephens, Barbara Hepworth: Works from the Tate Gallery Collection and Barbara Hepworth Museum St Ives (London, 1999), p.166. For more on Hepworth’s tachiste drawings see Stephen Feeke, ‘Hepworth and the Tache: Drawings and Paintings, 1957-58 [PDF, 5.9 MB]’, Hepworth Research Network Launch, The Hepworth Wakefield, 12-13 March 2020 [Accessed 2 September 2024].

[41] Of the approximate 220 artists who were shown over the ten-year lifespan of the gallery, 58% were from abroad. See Garlake, (1986) p.4.To date Garlake’s 1986 text on the New Vision Centre Gallery, published to accompany an exhibition at the Bede Gallery in Jarrow is the most extensive study on the Centre over its ten-year lifetime. More recently scholars including Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani and Simon Pierse have focused on the gallery’s support of artists from the Commonwealth, see for example Ohadi-Hamadani and Pierse’s respective papers for the 2016 conference Generation Painting: Abstraction and British Art, 1955-65 which accompanied the exhibition Generation Painting 1955-65: British Art from the Collection of Sir Alan Bowness at the Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge.

[42] Garlake, (1986), p.4.

[43] Nalecz also exhibited at the Drian Galleries herself on multiple occasions.

[44] For more on Themerson, see Harrison, (2002), pp.144-56. Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest her work, with examples included in the Barbican’s 2022 exhibition Postwar Modern, the 2023 exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and a solo display Franciska Themerson: Walking Backwards at Tate Britain in 2024.

[45] Selections from WIAC was held at the New Vision Centre Gallery in 1961. The Drian Galleries hosted WIAC: Drian 1968 and WIAC: The Feminine Eye in 1974.

[46] These include Anthea Alley, Sandra Blow, Dorothy Bordass, Nancy Horrocks, and Halima Nalecz. See ‘Index of Members’, WIAC 1966 (London: Women’s International Art Club), n.p. For further sources on individual members of WIAC, see Una Richmond, ‘Individual WIAC Artists’, The Women’s International Art Club [Accessed 25 August 2024].

[47] Guardian, 20 Aug. 1957, qtd. in Garlake, (1986), pp.5-6.

[48] See ‘Letter from John Moores to the Sunday Times’, 7 Aug. 1957, repr. in John Moores Painting Prize: Celebrating 60 Years, p.1.

[49] ‘Preface’, The John Moores Liverpool Exhibition (Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 1957), qtd. in Hana Leaper, The Catalogues of the John Moore’s Painting Prize, Drawing Room Display pamphlet (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2017) p.5.

[50] McDonald, (2018) p.6-7.

[51] The first prize in the junior section was awarded to John Bratby. The first prize in the open section was given to Jack Smith. See The John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, p.5.

[52] For full details of all prizewinners, see John Moores Painting Prize: Celebrating 60 Years.

[53] The first John Moores Prize also featured sculpture with works by women including Anthea Alley, Elisabeth Frink and Joan Moore.

[54] Sandra Blow also spent a year in Cornwall in 1957, residing in a cottage near Zennor formerly occupied by the writer D.H. Lawrence. See Michael Bird, Sandra Blow (Aldershot, 2005), p.64.

[55] Armstrong had been one of the founder members of the Penwith Society of Arts, the breakaway group from the St Ives Society of Artists which was formed in 1949. Having befriended Ben Nicholson in St Ives, she began to embrace abstraction, leading to her resignation from the St Ives Society of Artists. See David Tovey, Creating a Splash: The St Ives Society of Artists: The First 25 Years (Tewkesbury, 2003), p.167. I am grateful to Jason and Julia Lilley at the Penwith Gallery Archive for introducing me to Armstrong’s work. The Archive holds the Penwith Society minutes, including the first meeting of the Society on 8 February 1949, at which Armstrong was present.

[56] John Moores Painting Prize [accessed October 2024].

[57] For a complete list of additional works acquired for the Walker Art Gallery collection, see ‘Additional Walker Art Gallery Acquisitions’, in John Moores Painting Prize: Celebrating 60 Years, pp.98-9.

[58] Information from gallery label at the Walker Art Gallery, November 2019.

[59] The touring exhibition originated at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art in 1981 and travelled to Birmingham and Rochdale. Ayres’ painting Coelus (1976-7) was also acquired for the Atkinson Art Gallery collection, Stockport in 1983, while Galatea (1981-2) was acquired for The Whitworth, Manchester in the same year.

[61] Alice Correia, ‘Absence in Post-War British Painting: South Asian Modernists in Regional Collections’, Midlands Art Papers, Issue 4, 2021 [Accessed 12 March 2022].