Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Mixed Media

To see our other Modern British Art, scroll down to "More from this Seller" and below it click on "See all from this Seller" - or send us a message if you cannot find the artist you want. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912 – 2004) Card for Sandra Blow’s 75th birthday (1995) Gouache and collage 34 x 21 cm Inscribed to reverse “For Sandra, Happy Birthday, with love Willie, 13/9/95”. Barns-Graham’s modern design features 70 vividly coloured circles; each one is different from the last, but all are geometrically aligned in neat rows and columns. Sandra Blow’s initials appear separately as “S” and “B” in the design. Blow and Barns-Graham became friends in the 1950s; both spent lengthy periods of time in St Ives, and made major contributions to Britain’s catalogue of post-war art. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912. Her parents were second cousins, and their respective families were well established representatives of minor Scottish gentry from both the east and west of the country. As a child, Barns-Graham showed very early signs of creative ability. It was at school that Wilhelmina decided that she wanted to be an artist, stating later in life that “painting chose me, not I it”. After school she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where, after some dispute with her father (who was an emotional man prone to uncontrolled anger), she enrolled in 1931. During her time at Edinburgh College, Barns-Graham was taught by tutors including portrait painter David Alison and painter William MacTaggart. Her friends there included the influential Scottish painters Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun, and William Gear. After her education, Barns-Graham made study trips to Paris, London, and St Tropez before moving to St Ives, Cornwall, in 1940 (at the suggestion of the Edinburgh College of Art’s Principal Hubert Wellington). Barns-Graham moved near to where a group of modernist artists had settled, at Carbis Bay – this was a pivotal moment in her life. On one of her first evenings there she met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who made an immediate and lasting impression on her. She then went on to meet Borlase Smart...