A Paradise Lost: The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935 – 55

Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name curated by Dr David Mellor held at the Barbican Art Gallery 27 May – 19 July 1987.

The exhibition aimed at a reassessment of the young British artists of the 1940s, including John Minton, John Craxton, Leslie Hurry, Cecil Collins, Graham Sutherland and John Piper. Many rarely seen paintings, together with photographs, book jacket designs and film stills are also illustrated.

”From the late 1930s through to the 1950s a number of British artists, writers, photographers and film makers produced a new kind of Romantic art. While it looked back to a 19th century tradition of ‘visionary’ art – to William Blake and to certain styles of landscape panting, it also drew upon the continental Modernist art of Picasso, Miro, Rouault and Masson. This exhibition examined the themes and locations, the imagination of this Neo-Romantic style from the Pastoral as genre to an altogether more violent view of Nature.” Includes essays by Andrew Crozier, Nannette Aldred, Angela Weight and Ian Jeffrey.

Title: A Paradise Lost: The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935 – 55
Author: David Mellor
Publisher: Barbican Art Gallery
Publication date: 1993
Format: Softcover
Pages: 144
Condition: Very good
Stock Number: RB01859