Barbican Art Centre，Art Gallery
Thu 3 March—Sun 26 June 2022
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945 –1965 is an ambitious and timely reassessment of art produced in Britain during the twenty years after the Second World War. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic war that called into question religion, ideology and humanity itself, there followed the consequences of conflict: continued austerity, the Cold War, nuclear threat and the dismantling of empire. These very conditions – of past horror, continued anxiety and future promise – gave rise to an incredible richness of new imagery, forms and materials as artists in Britain sought to establish meaning and purpose and to reimagine the world around them.
This major exhibition brings together around 200 works of painting, sculpture and photography by 48 artists, drawn from public and private collections both international and in the UK. Much of the work is little known, never having been included in an overview such as this, while other works are exhibited for the first time. Postwar Modern focuses on the ‘new’ in this period: work created by artists who were shaped by their direct experiences of the war, its global impact and aftershocks, at a formative stage in their development.
Divided into fourteen thematic sections, the exhibition draws out the particular subjects that preoccupied artists in the postwar period, including the body, the post-atomic condition, the Blitzed streetscape, private relationships and imagined future horizons. By reframing the art within thematic categories that reflect and amplify these concerns, well-known figures can be considered in a new light.
Works by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Eduardo Paolozzi and David Hockney will be shown alongside artists who came to Britain fleeing Nazism, such as Frank Auerbach, Franciszka Themerson and Gustav Metzger, as well as artists who migrated from Britain’s crumbling empire, among them Francis Newton Souza, Frank Bowling, Avinash Chandra and Aubrey Williams–each of whom contributed powerfully to forging a distinctive postwar sensibility. The exhibition also foregrounds the work of women artists such as Jean Cooke,Eva Frankfurther, Gillian Ayres, Kim Lim,Sylvia Sleigh and Magda Cordell, who have been marginalised in previous histories of this period.
展覽地點：巴比肯藝術中心，三樓藝術畫廊
展覽時間：2022年3月3日-6月26日
「戰後現代：1945-1965 英國新藝術」是對二戰後20年間在英國誕生的藝術進行一次雄心且及時的重新評估。在一場對宗教、意識形態和人性本身提出質疑的災難性戰爭之後，隨之而來的是衝突的後果：持續的緊縮政策、冷戰、核威脅和帝國的瓦解。這些對過去的恐怖、持續的焦慮和對未來的希望產生了令人難以置信並豐富的新圖像、形式和材料，在英國的藝術家試圖建立新意義和目的，並重新想像他們周圍的世界。
這個大型展覽匯集了 48 位藝術家約 200 件繪畫、雕塑和攝影作品，來自國際和國內外的公共和私人收藏。大部分作品鮮為人知，也從未被囊括在這樣的主題下，而其他作品則是第一次展出。「戰後現代」關注了這一時期的“新”創作：當藝術家面對戰爭的直接感受、戰爭帶來的全球影響，他們的這些作品是一個處於發展探索中的形成階段。
展覽分為十四個主題，勾勒出戰後藝術家關注的特定主題，包括身體、後原子狀態、大轟炸後的街景、私人關係和想像的未來視野。在反映和放大這些主題框架下重新定義藝術，從此也產生了一種新的視角來重新觀看知名藝術家的作品。
該展覽帶來了Francis Bacon,Lucian Freud,Eduardo Paolozzi和David Hockney的作品，同時展出的藝術家也包括當年為了躲避納粹逃到英國的藝術家，如Frank Auerbach, Franciszka Themerson and Gustav Metzger, 以及從英國前殖民地移民到英國的藝術家，如Francis Newton Souza, Frank Bowling, Avinash Chandra and Aubrey Williams，他們每個人都通過藝術創作表達了個人獨特的戰後感受。這個展覽還特別展出了很多女性藝術家的作品，如Jean Cooke, Eva Frankfurther, Gillian Ayres, Kim Lim, Sylvia Sleigh和Magda Cordell，在過往，她們在這段歷史中的貢獻常被忽視。
