Destruction and reconstruction

It feels a little odd thinking and talking about a post-war period of British art when it seems recently that we might be in a pre-war state ourselves. In many ways though, our collective shift from relative security to the edge of our seats might be helpful when it comes to understanding the state of mind of the artists featured in the Postwar Modern – New Art in Britain 1945-1965 exhibition that is currently showing at The Barbican, London.

Using a mixture of painting, photography, textiles, drawing and sculpture the show intends to re-evaluate the 20 years between the end of World War II and the tail-end of the Modernist era. And it does this by looking at artists who are perhaps are less well-known and who established themselves in this period rather than those who were already high-profile during the war.

Jane Alison, the Barbican’s head of visual arts and the curator