Refiguring the 50s

Refiguring the 50s featured works by Joan Eardley, Sheila Fell, Eva Frankfurther, Josef Herman and L.S. Lowry; five figurative artists working in Britain in the 1950s, who each had a strong identification with the place in which they chose to live and work and which formed, for a significant part of their careers, the primary focus of their practice.

Each artist was associated with a particular place: Eardley – Townhead in Glasgow; Fell, the mining community and landscape of her native Aspatria, Cumbria; Frankfurther– London’s East End and its multi-cultural working-class communities; Herman– Ystradgynlais in South Wales with its indigenous mining community; and Lowry– his hometown of Manchester and its industrial, multi-peopled cityscape.

This exhibition links these five artists by uncovering a network of relationships, both personal and professional, and their shared exploration of particular artistic concerns and motifs. This exhibition is one of the outcomes of the Eva Frankfurther Research and Curatorial Fellowship for the Study of Emigré Artists.

Other exhibitions by Ben Uri Research Unit

Ben Uri Research Unit

Yalta 1945 by Komar & Melamid

Ben Uri Research Unit

Finchleystrasse - German artists in exile in Great Britain and Beyond, 1933–45

Ben Uri Research Unit

100 for 100: Ben Uri, Past, Present and Future

Ben Uri Research Unit

Self Portraits from the Ben Uri Collection

Ben Uri Research Unit

ART-EXIT 1939: A Very Different Europe