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Spring Lecture Series - Looking beyond the Bauhaus – Modernism sans frontières -Exhibiting Contemporary British art: The Anglo-German Club

Bauhaus

07/03/2019

[19/12]

The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street

Spring Lecture Series - Looking beyond the Bauhaus – Modernism sans frontières - Exhibiting Contemporary British art: The Anglo-German Club

The Gallery, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ - Thursday March 7th 2019 - Dr Lee Beard, Independent Scholar


In a letter to The Times on the 11th May 1932 Lieutenant–Colonel G. Cawson, Secretary of the Anglo-German Club, announced plans to hold an exhibition of British post-war art in Hamburg. Organised in collaboration with the Hamburg authorities, Cawson noted that included among the invited artists were Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson and Edward Wadsworth. The Anglo-German Club was located at 6 Carlton Gardens in London and it was at this venue that a second exhibition of contemporary British art was held later the following year. Considered in relation to the wider aims of the Anglo-German Club,  Lee will explore the contributions and possible motivations of the artists and individuals involved in these two exhibitions, including the ‘Honorary Organisers’ of the second show, Arthur Lett-Haines and J. R. J. Macnamara. Whereas Lett-Haines, presented himself as an ‘English Surrealist’, Macnamara was by 1935 a Conservative MP and member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. At a time of growing tensions across Europe, they felt it was still possible to present contemporary art as means to transcend “national and political aims and prejudices”.

Lee Beard is an independent art historian, editor and teacher. He is an established scholar of the work of Ben Nicholson (1894-1982), and has published more widely on 20th-century British art, including the newly-released, Ben Nicholson: Writings and Ideas (Lund Humphries). 

 

Tickets: £8.00 members/£12.00 non members/£5.00 students   

All lectures are held on Thursdays at 6.30pm in the Gallery at 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ.  Admission includes a glass of wine. Publications will be available to purchase on the night.


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