About
Founded in 2020, The New St Ives School is an artists' residency program in St Ives, Cornwall, in the UK. The program offers fellowships for artists, with studio spaces in St Ives, Zennor and Penzance, Cornwall. A board of directors nominate visual artists for invitation.
History
It can be argued that St Ives was as significant in the story of British Modernism as London.
From 1882, writer Virginia Woolf and artist Vanessa Bell spent time growing up only yards away from the residency, at Talland House. Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To The Lighthouse was inspired by her enduring relationship with St Ives, where her family had holidayed since she was a child. The view from her window was of Godrevy Lighthouse and the motifs of the Cornish coast appeared in many of her books.
In 1920, 100 years before The New St Ives School was founded, Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada set up a pottery in St Ives, sparking an international art connection for the town. In 1928, Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood visited St Ives, where they were impressed by the work of local artist Alfred Wallis. This encounter started another strand in the development of the Cornish fishing port as an artists' colony.
With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Ben Nicholson and sculptor Barbara Hepworth settled in St Ives, establishing an outpost for the abstract avant-garde movement in west Cornwall. They were soon joined by the prominent Russian Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo.
After the war ended, a new and younger generation of artists emerged, led by Hepworth and Nicholson. The collective included Peter Lanyon, John Wells, Roger Hilton, Bryan Wynter, Patrick Heron, Terry Frost, Wilhelmina Barns- Graham and Karl Weschke. It is with this group, together with Hepworth and Nicholson, that the term 'St Ives School' is particularly associated.
Many European and American artists visited St Ives, once word had spread about this creative hub nestled on the rural English coast. Although the town was relatively small, the ideas coming out of St Ives were anything but, and some of the most ambitious advances in art history originated in the town. Parallels can be drawn between the abstract landscapes produced by Lanyon and Heron and those of the American artist Sam Francis and the French Nicolas de Staël, who were exploring similar subject matters. Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko came to visit St Ives in 1958 as a guest of Paul Feiler, so an exchange of ideas was an inevitable outcome of their friendship. In 1960, Francis Bacon spent four months working in St Ives, where he painted at least twenty canvases but destroyed all but six, which include masterpieces such as Lying Figure and Head of a Man.
In 1993, Tate St Ives opened its doors to showcase works in the Tate collection by artists from the area, and to acknowledge the town's contribution to the art world. Artist Danny Fox, who grew up in St Ives, has spoken of the influence of Alfred Wallis and Patrick Heron on his work. In 2017, Fox painted an homage to Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood.
In June 2020, The New St Ives School officially opened, with its first artist-in- residence, Kingsley Ifill. The aim of the residency program is to establish a generation of artists who will go on to shape the future of the art world.