It's an exaggeration, but not a great one, to say that British art of the 1950s falls into one of two camps: glum figuration or cheerful abstraction. On one side you had the existential angst of Francis Bacon, the Angry Young Men of the Kitchen Sink School, and the leaden, clotted canvases of David Bomberg and his followers. On the other there were the St Ives artists, those who made up what was in effect a remarkable artistic community in western Cornwall. Their work varied from the classical, clean-cut abstractions of Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth to the vigorous informality of Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton.
Most, though not all of these artists are included in The Fifties: Art From The British Council Collection which opens at the RHA Gallagher Gallery tomorrow. One of the key British paintings of the decade, Lanyon's expansive Bojewyan Farms, is there. This picture, a brisk arrangement of interlocking planes and bold lines, exemplifies the correspondences and the differences between American and British abstraction of the time.
It is Abstract Expressionist in manner - expansive, free, assertive - but it is also recognisably rooted in place, with representational clues, and it is quite naturalistic in its use of subdued greys and greens. Although most of the St Ives artists could be described as abstract, to a greater or lesser extent elements of the landscape similarly find a place in their work.
Perhaps it was a combination of the light, the distance from London and the quality of the company, but whatever the reasons, something extraordinary happened to artists in the area around St Ives and Newlyn. It had a liberating effect on them. Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, William Scott, Sandra Blow, John Wells, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Terry Frost and Alan Davie were among those who visited regularly or, more often, came and stayed.
Lanyon was unusual in that he was born in St Ives. A larger-than-life romantic figure, his premature death, in a gliding accident in 1964, was a grievous loss to British art. In a way, his death also marked the end of an era. A lot of good work has been made there since, and it's still a favoured location for artists but, inevitably, Cornwall isn't the artistic centre it was then.
While The Fifties is understandably dominated by Cornwall-based artists, and underlines its extraordinary importance in the history of modern British painting, the show isn't only about Cornwall. It was the critic David Sylvester who coined the term Kitchen Sink School for John Bratby's pointedly downbeat domestic still-lifes, and the gloomy views of grim industrial towns such as those produced by Sheffield man Derrick Greaves. These works are almost uncannily emblematic of their era.
Like the various schools of abstraction, the Kitchen Sink painters could be seen as an antidote to the soft-focus patriotism of the Neo-Romantics, who were still around in force, and they're represented by father-figure Graham Sutherland and a painter of edgy, stilted figure studies, Keith Vaughan. Other aspects of figuration, however, of the high cholesterol Bacon, Freud and Bomberg varieties, don't make it into the show.
There were also strands of abstraction that were based not in St Ives, but in London. Again the term abstract is relative. Victor Pasmore styled himself and his companions "Constructivists" and came up with rigorously abstract design exercises in the spartan manner of 1920s De Stijl, but until the late 1940s his painting had a firmly representational base. Fellow Constructivist Adrian Heath mediated between London and St Ives. He had been a POW with St Ives-based Terry Frost, and was to some extent responsible for Frost becoming a painter.
One of the most exciting developments towards the end of the 1950s was the advent of a new grouping of painters which became known as the Situationists. Prime among them, and the only one included in The Fifties, was Henry Mundy, whose spirited paintings reflect the influence of American art. The work of the Situationists, while it became recognised in the long term, was partially eclipsed by an altogether new phenomenon, Pop Art - but then, that's another decade.
The Fifties: Art From The British Council Collection, can be seen at the RHA Gallagher Gallery from tomorrow until August 1st.
St Ives Painters, at TristAnn's Gallery in Park St, Dundalk, Co Louth, features the work of Irish artists who lived in St Ives, with work by artists currently based there.