When Modern Art Came to Gloucestershire

An illustrated talk by Lee Beard, Head of History of Art at Cheltenham Ladies’ College

In May 1938 the exhibition ‘Realism and Surrealism: Several Phases of Contemporary Art’ opened at the Guildhall, Gloucester. Among the 126 paintings and sculptures on display were artworks by some of the century’s most acclaimed modern artists including Salvador Dalí, Paul Klee and René Magritte. In this talk, Lee Beard will focus on two of the artists involved, Paul Nash and Pablo Picasso.

The British artist Paul Nash, who had met Picasso in Paris a decade earlier, was at this time actively involved in the promotion of Surrealist art in Britain. For Nash this was an artistic approach that corresponded with his own distinct renderings of the English landscape as a psychological space. In the late 1930s, Nash became a regular visitor to Gloucestershire, leading to a series of paintings, drawings, and photographs depicting the region. The Forest of Dean in particular provided a rich source of inspiration for him.

This illustrated talk will reveal how for a brief moment an exhibition in Gloucester connected the city to some of the most notable artistic and political events of the time, not least the rise of fascism across Europe. As Herbert Read would explain in the foreword to the Gloucester show, in an age of unrest, it was inevitable that this was to be reflected in the forms of painting and sculpture on display.

Dr Lee Beard is an art historian, writer, teacher and curator. He is an established scholar of the work of Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) and has published widely on modern art in Britain during the early 20th century.