Wilhelmina Barns-Graham - by Rob Airey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In May 1949, the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) visited the Grindelwald Glacier in Switzerland. It was a trip which would have a profound and lasting impact on her work. Charting the journey, the beautiful work it stimulated and wider questions around glacial landscapes, then and now, this publication provides insights that will expand our understanding of both an acclaimed body of work and the artist who created it.

That Barns-Graham produced her final glacier painting in 1994, some 45 years after her sole visit to Switzerland, is testament to the influence that the experience had on her. So too are her 100 or so individual glacier works - made first between 1949 and 1952 and then in revisiting the subject between 1976 and 1994. Including a complete catalogue of the glacier paintings, this book presents the definitive account of a trip that would transform the artistic imagination of one of the foremost British painters of the twentieth century.

Review Quotes

'The full catalogue of the glacier works is a helpful element of this book, but perhaps its most admirable quality is the wide range of authors, all bringing different perspectives to bear upon them. It is the combination of those perspectives that affords the reader a rich and nuanced understanding of the paintings and Barns-Graham herself. Short of visiting Grindelwald Glacier in person, the total experience of this book is surely the next best thing.' - Beth Williamson, The Art Newspaper

About the Author

Rob Airey is the Director of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. He has worked in collections management at Tate and the Henry Moore Foundation and in curatorial roles at the Royal Cornwall Museum and the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University. H.R. Corfield Carr is a poet, writer and researcher. Mark Cousins is a Scottish-Irish filmmaker and writer. His multi-screen installation, Like a Huge Scotland (2022), was inspired by Barns-Graham's glacier paintings. Alyson Hallet is a prize-winning poet with an extensive practice of collaboration with visual artists, composers, scientists, glassmakers and sculptors. Tilly Heydon is Project Archivist at the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. Peter Nienow is Professor of Glaciology at Edinburgh University. Cassia Pennington is Collections Manager at the Wilhelmina-Barns Graham Trust. Alice Strang is an independent art historian and curator, as well as a Senior Specialist in Modern and Contemporary Art at Lyon & Turnbull auctioneers.