ºÚÁÏÉç

Skip navigation

Main menu

  • What's on
  • Art & Artists
    • The Collection
      Artists
      Artworks
      Art by theme
      Media
      Videos
      Podcasts
      Short articles
      Learning
      Schools
      Art Terms
      Tate Research
      Art Making
      Create like an artist
      Kids art activities
      Tate Draw game
  • Visit
  • DISCOVER ART
  • ARTISTS A-Z
  • ARTWORK SEARCH
  • ART BY THEME
  • VIDEOS
  • ART TERMS
  • SCHOOLS
  • TATE KIDS
  • RESEARCH
  • Tate Britain
    Tate Britain Free admission
  • ºÚÁÏÉç
    ºÚÁÏÉç Free admission
  • Tate Liverpool + RIBA North
    Tate Liverpool + RIBA North Free admission
  • Tate St Ives
    Tate St Ives Ticket or membership card required
  • FAMILIES
  • ACCESSIBILITY
  • SCHOOLS
  • PRIVATE TOURS
Tate Logo
This is a past display. Go to current displays
Photo of a room in the Tate St Ives display

photo: © Rikard Österlund

Paris, London and St Ives 1920–1940

This room suggests a range of styles and ideas that concerned modern European artists between the wars

This display brings together national and international figures that were seeking a new language for art following the atrocities of the First World War, while sensing the anxieties of the next.

In the 1920s a circle of modern artists in London wanted to portray a more direct response to the world. British painters Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood looked to the untutored work of Cornish fisherman Alfred Wallis. For sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, it came from studying ethnographic carvings in the British Museum. Along with Bernard Leach, the potter who moved to St Ives from Japan in 1920, each artist emphasised the handmade, material qualities of their work.

The 1930s brought the rise of fascism and social unrest in Europe. Groups and publications in London and Paris such as ´¡²ú²õ³Ù°ù²¹³¦³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô-°ä°ùé²¹³Ù¾±´Ç²Ô, Axis and
Circle sought to unite like-minded artists, architects and writers. From Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and Russian sculptor Naum Gabo to British artists
Marlow Moss and Barbara Hepworth, non-representational abstract art had become linked to hopes for an international, spiritually enriched, politically
harmonious art and society.

Others expressed the fears and uncertainties of the decade through responses derived from the unconscious. Dreamlike images of everyday
objects and ominous landscapes came to the fore in the work of British artists Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash and Eileen Agar.

Read more

Tate St Ives

Getting Here

Free
Artwork
Close

Join in

Sign up to emails

Sign up to emails

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google and apply.

°Õ²¹³Ù±ð’s privacy policy

About

  • About us
  • Our collection
  • Terms and copyright
  • Governance
  • ARTIST ROOMS
  • Tate Kids

Support

  • ºÚÁÏÉç
  • Patrons
  • Donate
  • Corporate
  • Press
  • Jobs
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Contact
© The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, 2025
All rights reserved