‘Metavisual Tachiste Abstract' The Redfern Gallery, London, 1957

‘Metavisual Tachiste Abstract: Painting in England Today', was a landmark exhibition organised by the Redfern Gallery, London and shown from the 4th of April – 4th of May 1957. A pivotal moment in the history of Modern British Art, the exhibition was mostly painterly abstraction and included many of the leading British artists of the day: Ralph Rumney (14 Works); Paul Feiler (8 Works); Patrick Heron (12 Works); Frank Avary Wilson (10 Works); Derek Middleton (10 Works); Bryan Wynter (10 Works); Denis Bowen (11 Works); Donal Hamilton Fraser (7 Works); Terry Frost (7 Works); John Coplans (10 Works); Rodrigo Moynihan (6 Works); Gillian Ayres (15 Works); Alan Davie (6 Works); Henry Cliffe (13 Works); Roger Hilton (11 Works); Gwyther Irwin (8 Works); William Gear (10 Works); Clifford Ellis (8 Works); Peter Kinley (9 Works); Robyn Denny (9 Works); Sandra Blow (6 Works); J. Milnes Smith (8 Works); Dorothy Bordass (15 Works); Peter Lanyon (6 Works); Cliff Holden (13 Works); Ian Stephenson (5 Works); Ben Nicholson (4 Works); Adrain Heath (7 Works); Victor Pasmore (4 Works); Roger Barr (13 Works).

The approaches on display were broad, bringing together those working in both constructivist and gestural styles, with Denys Sutton stating in his preface that ‘diversity and complexity are as essential to art as to life or politics’ The title for the exhibition was suggested by Delia Heron and the selection made by Rex Nan Kivell and Harry Tatlock Miller (advised by Patrick Heron), partly from artists represented by or with an association to the Redfern Gallery, but also artists less well known to the gallery to enable an in-depth overview of the varying approaches to abstraction at the time. In June 1957 the exhibition travelled, as 'Peinture Anglaise Contemporain', to the Musée des Beaux Arts, Liege where works were added by Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and Ivon Hitchens.

Held the year following Tate’s “Modern Art in the United States” – the first large-scale exhibition of recent developments in American art to be shown in Britain – Metavisual Tachiste Abstract exposed the concurrent influences of American Action Painting, American Abstract Expressionism and the more European tendency of Tachisme. For many artists the Tate exhibition had been a revelation, whilst others simultaneously incorporated and resisted it.

The catalogue cover with typography designed by Robyn Denny reproduces (in b/w) Ralph Rumney’s The Change which is now in the Tate collection. In his Review of the show for Art News and Review in June 1957 Roger Coleman wrote that “Tachiste is on the whole a better description of Rumney’s activity, as it steers our attention to European rather than a trans-Atlantic orientation. . . . Indeed Rumney has been associated with some of the most avant of the recent European avant-garde movements like the COBRA group and the Nuclear painters.”

A number of important paintings were shown for the first time in Metavisual Tachiste Abstract, including Gillian Ayres' Distillation, one of her first loosely painted, tachiste canvases made specifically for the exhibition and which was selected for the Paris Biennale a year later. Also on display was Roger Hilton's January 1956, one of the first paintings he produced while in St Ives which the Tate purchased in 1958; works from Alan Davies’ Fish Gods series an important example of which is now in the Tate collection; and Robyn Denny’s Manman also now in Tate. 
Margaret Garlake wrote in Art Monthly in 1989 that as a result of the exhibition Taschisme attained a modicum of acceptance as the dominant image of the British avant-garde.

In 2007 to mark the 50th anniversary of Metavisual Tachiste Abstract, The Redfern Gallery published a fully illustrated colour catalogue with an essay by Martin Harrison. The catalogue illustrated here is the original scarce 1957 publication.

Title: ‘Metavisual Tachiste Abstract'
Author(s): With a preface by Denys Sutton
Publisher: The Redfern Gallery, London
Date of Publication: 1957
Binding: perfect-bound softcover
Pages: 54pp.
Condition: Very Good. Minor wear to covers. Small chips to front panel mostly at the hinge and spine. The back cover lightly soiled in places and the top left corner creased. Slight edgewear. Internally very good save for a few marks including where printed images have gently rubbed against adjacent pages and areas where previous faint pencil annotations have been erased or partly erased.
Stock Number: RB00826