Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE HRSA HRSW, 1912-2004

Born in St Andrews, Barns-Graham went against her father’s wishes to study at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1930s. In 1940, on the advice of the principal Hubert Wellington, she travelled to St Ives and settled there, becoming part of the circle which included Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo. Visits to the Grindelwald Glacier in Switzerland in 1949 and to Spain in the 1950s were important in the honing of her abstract style. In the 1960s, her work became more strictly geometrical, however later life brought a productive period in which her paintings and screenprints were full of colour and movement. Her contribution to modernism and abstraction in Britain has been increasingly recognised in recent years.