Page 46 - Art First: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: 2014

Biography

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was included in many of the important exhibitions
born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8th June 1912. Deter - on pioneer ing British abstract art that took place
mining while at school that she wanted to be an in the 1950s.
artist she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art
where she enrolled in 1932 and graduated with her In 1960 Barns-Graham inherited Balmungo House
diploma in 1937. which initiated a new phase in her life. From this
moment she divided her time between the two
At the suggestion of the College’s principal, Hubert coastal communities, establishing herself as much
Wellington, she moved to St Ives in 1940. Early on as a Scottish artist as a St Ives one. Balmungo House
she met Borlase Smart, Alfred Wallis and Bernard was to become the heart of her professional life.
Leach, as well as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth
and Naum Gabo who were living locally at Carbis Barns-Graham exhibited consistently throughout
Bay. She became a member of the Newlyn Society her career, in private and public galleries. Though
of Artists and St Ives Society of Artists but was to not short of exposure throughout the 1960s and
leave the latter in 1949 when she became one of 1970s, her next greatest successes did not come
the founding members of the breakaway Penwith until the 1990s. Important exhibitions of her work
Society of Artists. She was an early exhibitor of the at the Tate St Ives in 1999/2000 and 2005 and the
significant Crypt Group. Her peers in St Ives include, publication of the first monograph on her life and
among others, Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Roger work, Lynne Green’s W. Barns-Graham: a studio life,
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Barnaloft Studio, St Ives, 1966
Hilton, and John Wells. 2001 (new extended edition, 2012), confirmed her
as one of the key contributors of the St Ives School,
Barns-Graham’s history is bound up with St Ives and as a significant British modernist.
where she lived throughout her life, and it is the
place where she experienced her first great suc - She was made a CBE in 2001, and received four
cesses as an artist. Following her travels to the honorary doctorates (St Andrews, 1992; Plymouth,
Grindelwald Glacier, Switzerland, in 1949 she 2000; Exeter 2001; and Heriot Watt Universities,
embarked on a series of paintings and drawings 2003). Her work is found in all major public
which caught the attention of some of the most collections within the UK.
significant critics and curators of the day. In 1951
she won the Painting Prize in the Penwith Society She died in St Andrews on 26th January 2004.
of Arts in Cornwall Festival of Britain Exhibition
and went on to have her first London solo exhibi - Wilhelmina Barns-Graham has been represented
tion at the Redfern Gallery in 1952. She was by Art First since January 1994.