New Movements in Art 1942

Found - a folding 6 page art catalogue/ booklet for an exhibition in wartime Leicester June 1942. Artists included John Tunnard (who provides the image on the cover) John Piper, Ivor Hitchens, Graham Sutherland, Frances Hodgkins, Edward Wadsworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth, Hans Erni, Paul Nash, Kurt Schwitters, Eileen Agar, Ithell Colquhoun, Ceri Richards, Michael Ayrton,  John Buckland Wright ,Cecil Collins, Leslie Hurry. Top price was £150 for Two Serpents by Paul Nash. The 3 Schwitters were all less than £30..The curator and writer of the introduction (below) was Trevor Thomas - the subject of another Jot entry, as 21 years later he was the last person to see Sylvia Plath alive. He wrote a slim book on this called Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters (Privately Published, Bedford 1989.)

New Movements in art exhibition: 23 May to 21 June 1942: Leicester Museum and Art Gallery

Trevor Thomas, Curator.

By way of introduction.

The contention that "every picture tells a story" is now recognised as a popular fallacy, just as, Hollywood excepted, nobody now believes that "every story makes a picture." In this way free from the necessity for literary associations, we can approach such an exhibition as this with unfettered intelligence and liberated imagination.

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Gabrièle Buffet Picabia on Dada

Found in an exhibition catalogue from the Hanover Gallery, London 1968 of Francis Picabia watercolours this unpublished essay on Dada by Picabia's widow Gabrièle Buffet Picabia (1884 - 1988). It is mostly quotations from important Dadaist manifestoes but the first part is by her (followed by Andre Breton.)

The intellectual world of Europe has been upset for several years by a strange sect which calls itself "Dada", and its followers Dadaists.

It is difficult to define Dada because Dada pretends to escape from everything that is common or ordinary or sensible. Dada does not recognise any traditions, any influences, or indeed and limits. Dada is a spontaneous product of life; a sort of cerebral mushroom which can appear and grow in every soil.

Dada cannot be defined; it reveals itself; and during the five years in which Dada manifestations have taken place all over the world, the public which comes en masse, in turn furious, amused, deceived, and nevertheless subjugated, has not succeeded in solving this problem:

Are the Dadas serious?
Are the Dadas curers?
Are the Dadas artist?
Are the Dadas dangerous?
Are the Dadas harmless idiots?

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