Architecture Subject Overview
Modernist architecture and design represented a utopian vision of how the built environment could be adapted to the needs to modern industrial society. Industrialization had…
Search Results 1 - 25 of 148
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Symbolism Overview
Symbolism is a late-nineteenth-century literary movement centred mostly around the work of poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam,…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Pick, Frank (1878–1941)
Frank Pick was a design patron and early champion of modernism in Britain. As the head of London Transport, he transformed the company into the…
Read, (Sir) Herbert Edward (1893–1968)
Herbert Edward Read was one of the most influential theorists and promoters of modern art in Britain, with a career spanning over 50 years. He…
Rodker, John (1894–1955)
The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants into Britain, John Rodker was born in Manchester on 18 December 1894 and subsequently raised in London from age six.…
Bell, Vanessa (1879–1961)
Vanessa Bell was a painter and decorative artist, and an innovator in interior design, who became central to the development of modernism in Britain in…
Leeder, Sigurd (1902–1981)
In a career that spanned over sixty years, Sigurd Leeder made important contributions to the dance worlds in Germany, Great Britain, Chile, and Switzerland. His…
Gandhi, M. K. (1869–1948)
Mohandas Karamchand (sometimes called Mahatma, or ‘great soul’) Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, a champion of Indian independence from Great Britain, and an advocate and…
Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri (1891–1915)
Born in St Jean-de-Braye, France, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska had a catalytic effect on the development of modernist sculpture in Britain. In 1911 he moved to London,…
The Oshogbo Group
Between 1962 and 1966, after Nigeria gained Independence from Britain, a group of artists emerged in the Yoruba town of Oshogbo in southwestern Nigeria. They…
Lutyens, Elisabeth (1906–1983)
(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE, was an English composer, credited with helping to establish the twelve-tone method of serialism in Britain. Lutyens’s first major composition using…
MARS Group (1933--1957)
The Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) was a coalition of architects, academics and critics united by the aim to promote modernist architecture in Britain. Founded…
Coates, Wells Wintemute (1895–1958)
Wells Coates was a Canadian-born architect and industrial designer who became a pioneer of Modernism in Britain. As a founder of the Isokon design company,…
Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907–1973)
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was an essayist, librettist, anthologist, teacher, and, above all, poet, active in the literary cultures of both Britain (c.1927–1939) and the…
Bacon, Francis (1909–1992)
British painter Francis Bacon was one of the most important figures of international post-war modernism. During the 1940s and 1950s, he developed a characteristic painting…
Direct Carving
Developed in the 20th century, direct carving (taille directe in French) is a carving technique where the sculptor works with hammer and chisel that comes…
The Boer War (1899–1902)
The British Empire waged two wars in southern Africa at the close of the nineteenth century. In the First Boer War (or Transvaal War) of…
Isokon (1931–1939)
Isokon was a British furniture and architectural design company founded in London in 1931. Led by architect Wells Coates and plywood manufacturer Jack Pritchard, Isokon…
Burrowes, Leslie (1908–1985)
Dancer, choreographer, and teacher Leslie Burrowes was the first British recipient of the full certification of Mary Wigman’s Dresden School, which licenced her to teach…
Lowry, Laurence Stephen (1887–1976)
L. S. Lowry was a modern British artist celebrated for his depictions of Salford and Manchester. As well as making portraits, landscapes, and seascapes, he…
Pritchard, John Craven (Jack) (1899–1992)
Jack Pritchard was a British furniture manufacturer and design patron who co-founded the Isokon design company in 1931. Under his leadership, Isokon developed mass-produced, standardized…
Hulme, Thomas Ernest (1883–1917)
T. E. Hulme was an influential early 20th-century English poet and thinker. Credited by T. S. Eliot in 1924 as the “forerunner of a new…