The Euston Road School artists’ group, named after their premises in Euston Road, was active between 1937 to 1939, with its members favouring realism instead of the contemporary trend of Avant Garde abstraction.
The artists, staff and students, used their modernist approach to make naturalistic imagery of everyday life, which they hoped would make art more accessible to the general public again. Their left-leaning political views were at odds with those of the Avant Garde artists who sought to isolate themselves and art from the people.
[caption id=“attachment_62699” align=“alignleft” width=“300”]
(c) Jenny Gowing (for the estate of Sir Lawrence Gowing); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation[/caption]
The school closed in 1939 with the outbreak of WWII, as many of the members were called to the armed forces. There were, however, exhibitions of the group’s work in 1942 and 1948. By 1949, William Coldstream, one of the group’s founding members had left to work at The Slade School of Art. He had, however, created a group identity that would continue to influence, and be used to represent the new trend of naturalism in British art.
This exhibition runs along Paper – Drawings, prints and works on paper which features some fascinating examples of modern art by modern and contemporary artists and demonstrates the huge range of effects that can be created using paper and imagination.
Works featured include those by Allen Jones, Nicholas Monro, Michael Ayrton, Basil Beattie and Katherine Jones. These are displayed alongside prints by Joe Tilson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Cecil Collins, and drawings by George Clausen, Gwen John and Michael Craig-Martin.
The exhibition is free to attend and will be on display until Saturday 14 April. For further information, click here.
