Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65

Jane Alison

Hardcover | 24.43 x 3.63 x 30.48 cm | 352 pp

Prestel | 2022 | 9783791379357

Spanning painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and photography, Postwar Modern explores a rich field of experiment which challenges the idea that Britain was a cultural backwater at this time. The book looks afresh at celebrated artists such as Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Lucian Freud and Eduardo Paolozzi in dialogue with lesser-known figures including Francis Newton Souza, Avinash Chandra and Robert Adams, who were acclaimed by contemporaries but neglected in subsequent history-making; others, like Kim Lim, Anwar Jalal Shemza and Franciszka Themerson, are only now attracting the attention they deserve.

Throughout their work, vital shared preoccupations become visible: gender, class, race and nationhood; the body, the bombsite, and the home. It is a period resonating strongly with our own: as the UK confronts the challenges of post-pandemic reconstruction, society is asking similarly deep questions about who we want and need to be.

The book was published to accompany an exhibition is 2022 at Barbican, London and features texts by Jane Alison, Hilary Floe, Ben Highmore, Hammad Nassar and Greg Salter.