The Geometry of Beauty: The Not Very British Art of Six British Artists

James Bartos

Hardcover | 19.05 x 3.05 x 26.04 cm | 320 pp

Unicorn Press | 2019 | 9781912690343 

These six ‘not very British’ artists are presented through a series of insightful new interviews with the artists and their gallerists. Bartos’s unusual combination of art history, critique and artist testimony thoroughly reinvigorates one’s appreciation of geometric abstract art today. 

Further, Bartos provides a fascinating context - an account of the rich history and enduring aesthetic power of geometric abstract art. Writing with the passion of a committed collector and the sensibility of an art historian, Bartos doesn’t just chart his subject, he defends its place within the contemporary art world and provokes larger questions about what makes art meaningful.

In this deeply personal study, British geometric abstraction is situated within the context of a broader international movement which spanned the course of the twentieth century, and which continues into our own time.  Interviews with the artists and those who knew them, illustrated with fine examples across a range of media, explore what drew each to pursue a means of expression that developed against the grain of British modernism. These thoughtful conversations press for a serious reconsideration of the artists’ work, and of British geometric abstraction more generally. Amy Meyers, Director, Yale Center for British Art.