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The establishment of constructed abstract art in London after the Second World War.By Alastair Grieve.Abstract art is a twentieth century discovery that emerged in Western Europe at around the start of the First World War. It flourished between about 1914 and 1939 but was severely held back by the Second World War, except in America and Switzerland. In London it only began to re-emerge in 1951, the year of the Labour government's celebratory Festival of Britain.The principal artists who began to make constructed abstract art at that time were the sculptor Robert Adams (1917-84); the painter Adrian Heath (1920-92); Anthony Hill, born 1930 so youngest in the group and just finishing as a student at the Central School of Art; Kenneth Martin (1905-84), painter and mobile maker; Mary Martin (1907-69), relief maker; and Victor Pasmore (1908- 98), who had been a founder member of the realist Euston Road School but in 1948 had shocked by his sudden defection from realism to rigorously geometric abstract art.With the notable exception of Hill, who already produced abstract art as a teenager and never practised realism, all the artists in the group were emerging from figuration into an abstract art that was positive, built up of balanced relations of clear, geometric forms. This at a time when important figures in the administration of the arts in Britain such as Kenneth Clark and John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery, expressed a dislike of abstract art. Such art was difficult to see in Britain. Heath has commented: ‘A familiarity with the essays of Mondrian, Kandinsky, Arp and Vantongerloo backed by a few black and white reproductions preceded contact with their original works by several years’ (A. Heath, In Answer to Predicament, London Magazine, July 1961, pp. 77-8). Defensively, Pasmore wrote in 1951 in The Listener, ‘Today the whole world is shaken by the spirit of reconstruction.’ … ‘In painting and sculpture, as also in architecture, an entirely new language has been formed bearing no resemblance at all to traditional forms’ (V. Pasmore letter, The Listener, XLVI, no. 1176, 13 September 1951, p. 427).Few people shared his beliefs but he was fortunate that William Johnstone, head of the Central School where he and Adams taught and Hill was a student, welcomed Bauhaus teaching methods. Relationships were also established with the French abstract art group Le Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and with the American relief artist Charles Biederman, with whom there was a vehement exchange of ideas. Biederman's great book Art as the Evolution of Visual Knowledge argued the importance of the constructed abstract relief as a stage between painting and fully three-dimensional works. Biederman however disliked the use of mathematics in art, which was favoured by the British artists. Neither did he share their fondness for black and white and the limited colours of unpainted modern materials. From 22 May to 11 June 1951, the artists listed above showed together in an exhibition of Abstract Paintings, Sculptures, Mobiles organised by Heath, with help from Pasmore and Kenneth Martin, at the left wing Artists International Association in Lisle Street, London. These artists never formed a closed group. Neither did they issue a manifesto. But they showed together from 1951 to 1957 and issued statements and essays that they published in their own ephemeral publications. Characteristic of their art is an emphasis on pure geometric forms, often with a suggestion of movement. Kenneth Martin described it in Broadsheet No. 2, one of their publications that appeared in July 1952 at the time of their second exhibition at Heath's studio at 22 Fitzroy Street in central London: ‘the new artist has been given the means to create a new object, instead of the appearance of an object, and to organize real space, instead of illusional space’. ... ‘It is this real concrete object which is the concern of the constructionist’. … ‘New concepts and new forms demand new techniques. The bits of wood and metal, the plastics, the kitchen material, the moves towards machine art, already separate the new art from the museums, to the dismay of a public who are not accustomed to an art of environment’ (K. Martin, An Art of Environment, Broadsheet 2, July 1952, see A. Grieve, Constructed Abstract Art in England, Yale University, 2005, p. 20).In the same number of Broadsheet Pasmore wrote on 'Abstract, Concrete and Subjective Art': ‘[T]he canvas on a stretcher, with its pure frontal surface and counterfeit back, enclosed in a window-type frame and viewed from a single standpoint in front, not only belongs to naturalistic and literary painting, but also symbolises the obsolete concept of static three-dimensional space’ (V. Pasmore, 'Abstract, Concrete and Subjective Art', Broadsheet 2, July 1952, see Grieve, p. 21). In the same number, Hill wrote on Max Bill's 'Concrete Art'. However, the name of the art they were making themselves was never settled. It was ‘constructivist’, ‘constructionist’, ‘concrete’, or, as Mary Martin simply put it - ‘constructed abstract art', which is the term I prefer. Adrian Heath was a leading organiser and his studio in Fitzroy Street provided a location for much of the group's activity. In 1952-3 he showed there three weekend exhibitions of their art, which he arranged ambitiously with the help of the architects Trevor Dannatt, who taught at the Central School and John Weeks, a friend of the Martins who was an admirer of Mondrian and Mies van der Rohe. Photographs of these studio exhibitions show very exciting displays of abstract paintings, reliefs, mobiles, prints, sculpture and modern furniture. They made very stimulating environments. The seeds of the major exhibition This is Tomorrow were laid by the exhibitions at 22 Fitzroy Street. The move into real space with objects built from machine-age materials raised questions about the relationship of the new works to the new architecture. Pasmore had already encountered this question at the Festival of Britain where he had designed a very large ceramic mural, The Waterfall, for the Regatta Restaurant. From 19 May to 9 June 1954, at the Building Centre, near Fitzroy Street, the artists mounted an exhibition that faced the question directly. This exhibition, misnamed Artist versus Machine, showed how artists might harness machine production positively in their art. Stephen Gilbert and John Ernest showed work there by invitation, as did Biederman. But Max Bill refused to participate, which was a blow, while the famous engineer Ove Arup gave a hostile opening speech and Reyner Banham, surprisingly, wrote an hostile review (P.R. Banham, Match Abandoned, Art News and Review, VI, no. 9, 29 May, 1954, p. 7).Undeterred, Heath, aided by Hill and others in the group, mounted another exhibition, entitled Nine Abstract Artists, at the Redfern Gallery in January 1955. The nine were Adams, Frost, Heath, Hill, Hilton, Kenneth and Mary Martin, Pasmore, Scott. This exhibition marked the publication of a book of the same title with illustrated essays by the nine artists. Heath instructed the articulate Lawrence Alloway to write the introduction. Alloway stresses the independence of the group from pre-war abstract art: ‘In the fifties, none of the pre-war British artists are important for non-figurative art: they have either become romantics or, like Nicholson and Hepworth, at least tired of their thirtyish purity. A pattern of conversions has been established - with Victor Pasmore as culture-hero’ (L. Alloway, Nine Abstract Artists, London, 1954, pp. 2, 3).At Nine Abstract Artists Hill showed one of his earliest reliefs, Progression of Rectangles, made from plywood and plastic sheet. Mary Martin showed two reliefs of plywood, Pasmore a relief of plastic and wood. In his introduction to the exhibition's catalogue, Hill emphasized the continuity of the group's endeavours since 1951 to establish the new abstract art here. Surprisingly, a very warm review of the exhibition came from John Berger. He wrote that the artists ‘have an integrity that is impressive, whilst their self-imposed disciplines have developed their purely visual sensibility to a very high pitch. These are their best works to date, contrary to what I thought, their work has become livelier instead of staler’ (see A. Grieve, ibid, p. 31).Perhaps the most ambitious exhibition to emerge from the historically important sequence of exhibitions that Heath and his friends organised from 1951-6 was This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery, 9 August to 9 September 1956. After a quarrelsome meeting at 22 Fitzroy Street, where the original group of abstract artists were infiltrated by members of the Independent Group, a separate ‘ginger group’ based at the ICA, it was suggested by the architect Colin St John Wilson that a way forward towards an exhibition about art and architecture would be for teams to be set up consisting of an architect, a painter and a sculptor. By 30th March 1955 Reyner Banham was able to give Bryan Robertson, director of the Whitechapel Gallery, a bland ‘statement of aims’ for the proposed ‘Collaborative exhibition of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects: to demonstrate various ways in which architects, painters, sculptors and other plastic artists can collaborate in the creation of coherent works of art’ (Whitechapel Gallery Archive). At the end of prolonged negotiations twelve pavilions were set up at the Whitechapel Gallery five of which involved artists from Pasmore's circle. Pasmore himself collaborated with the senior architect Ernö Goldfinger. Their pavilion was a square divided into four open cubes, which gave space for two of Pasmore's reliefs and a large claw-like wall sculpture, by Helen Phillips, a friend of Goldfinger.Hill collaborated with the sculptor John Ernest, the painter Denis Williams and the architect Colin Glennie. Their pavilion was an homage to the founding abstract movements - De Stijl, Suprematism and Constructivism. Interestingly, Hill and Ernest remade works by the pioneers, seen only in reproduction, in more modern materials. So, Malevich's White Square, in oil on canvas, was remade as a shallow relief in painted fibreboard and a wooden Rodchenko construction was remade in aluminium. They also showed their own constructed abstract reliefs and Ernest made an open tower of thin orthogonal planes held in a slim frame of metal rods.Kenneth and Mary Martin collaborated with John Weeks on a minimal pavilion of white plaster screens, supported at their tops by a triangular black brace, enclosing a mobile of phosphor bronze by Kenneth Martin. The mobile, intricate and beautiful whether still or in motion, was suspended on a nylon thread as a 'discrete form' and lit to create shadows on the screens. John Weeks also collaborated with Adrian Heath on a freestanding wall built in 12 courses of hollowed concrete blocks by a professional bricklayer. An inspiration may have come from Rietveldt's sculpture pavilion at Sonsbeek of 1955, in which such blocks were used, though the systemic arrangement of the blocks was likened by Heath himself to the pattern of rectangles of various sizes in his painting Growth of Forms of 1951.Finally, Robert Adams collaborated with Colin St John Wilson, Peter Carter and the engineer Frank Newby. As a united team they designed a sculpted passage leading past projecting basic shapes, under a downward swooping ceiling, to a free-standing structure of paired planes coated in polished aluminium. Normal distinctions between architecture and sculpture were dissolved. It was a secular spatial experience but it was undoubtedly influenced by Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp inaugurated in June 1955 and seen in model form by Wilson on a visit to the architect's office. At the end of the 'sixties and the start of the next decade a new affiliation of British artists of the 'constructivist syndrome', the Systems Group, emerged in three exhibitions - Systeemi-System, Syntactic Art from Britain, organized by Jeffrey Steele and his wife Arja Nenonen at the Amos Anderson Gallery, Helsinki, in November 1969; Matrix at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, in June 1971; Systems, toured by the Arts Council in 1972-3. The main artists in this group are John Ernest, Malcolm Hughes, Colin Jones, Michael Kidner, Peter Lowe, David Saunders, Jean Spencer, Jeffrey Steele and Gillian Wise. As their name implies, they were all engaged in ‘the production and presentation of art in which a rationally determined system is of central importance’ (A. Grieve, ibid, p. 260. section VI, note 11. I am grateful to Peter Lowe for discussion on the Systems Group). They acknowledged a debt to Swiss Concrete artists, especially Richard Lohse, but also owed some influence to the Op art of the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel. There were also debts to the older generation of English abstract artists as both Colin Jones (b. 1934) and Peter Lowe (b. 1938) had been taught by Kenneth and Mary Martin at Goldsmiths College. However, although Gillian Wise showed in all three of the exhibitions mentioned above and John Ernest showed in the last two, the founder members of the earlier group were noticeable by their absence. In fact, Kenneth and Mary Martin and Hill were invited by Steele to exhibit in Helsinki but they declined. Although the Systems Group disbanded in 1976 several members - Colin Jones, Peter Lowe, Jeffrey Steele, Gillian Wise, among them - have continued to work on constructed abstract art to the present day. But they have been through hard times. For many years Lucy Milton's small gallery in Notting Hill Gate provided their only commercial outlet. And it is remarkable how their activities were excised from most of the blanket survey exhibitions purporting to cover the history of modern British art such as the Royal Academy's 1987 British Art in the Twentieth Century: The Modern Movement. The excision justifies the complaint of critic and art historian Norbert Lynton in 2002 that: ‘Even today English constructivism is actively written out of history’ (N. Lynton, 'The Role of the Critic', Blast to Freeze, British Art in the Twentieth Century, Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, 2002, p. 313). Instead, the School of London has enjoyed a surfeit of coverage. More recently however, there is evidence that the tide has turned. From 18 July 2016 to 17 April 2017 the Tate's collection of large Systems Group works was exhibited at Tate Britain. Peter Lowe and other ex Systems Group artists now have work displayed in West End commercial galleries. In 2007 John Carter, maker of constructed abstract reliefs, was elected a Royal Academician. And today there are several other such abstract artists working individually. Among the most impressive of these is Norman Dilworth. Dilworth, born 1931 in Wigan, flourishes as an international European. He lives in Lille but has worked in Amsterdam, Paris and London where he enjoyed friendship with Kenneth Martin and was influenced by Mary Martin in his constructions of stained wood or corten steel. His work is marked by a startling fusion of systematic construction, frankly shown surface materiality and extreme elegance. The movement is certainly ongoing.

Kenneth Martin (1905-1984)

Order and Change (Black) 1

Details

Kenneth Martin (1905-1984)
Order and Change (Black) 1
signed and inscribed 'ORDER AND CHANGE (BLACK) Kenneth Martin' (on the overlap)
oil on canvas
36 x 36 in. (91.5 x 91.5 cm.)
Painted in 1977.

Provenance

Estate of Kenneth Martin.
with Austin Desmond Fine Art, London, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, 1977 Hayward Annual: current British art selected by Michael Compton, Howard Hodgkin, and William Turnbull, London, Hayward Gallery, 1977, pp. 50, 134, no. 86, illustrated.
K. Martin, Chance and Order, The Sixth William Townsend Lecture 1979, London, 1979, p. 17, no. 22, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Kenneth Martin: the chance and order series, screw mobiles and related works: 1953-1984, London, Annely Juda Fine Art, 1999, p. 24, exhibition not numbered, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin: Constructed Works, London, Camden Arts Centre, 2007, pp. 37, 86, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Abstraction-Creation: Post-War Geometric Abstract Art from Europe and South America, London, Austin Desmond Fine Art, 2010, p. 46, no. 31, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Hayward Gallery, 1977 Hayward Annual: current British art selected by Michael Compton, Howard Hodgkin, and William Turnbull, May - September 1977, no. 86, lent by the artist.
London, Waddington and Tooth Galleries, Kenneth Martin: Recent Works, June 1978, ex-catalogue.
New York, Sperone Westwater Fischer Inc., Kenneth Martin, 1980, catalogue not traced.
London, Arts Council of Great Britain, Kenneth Martin: the late paintings, June - August 1985, ex-catalogue.
Bottrop, Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop - Moderne Galerie, Austellung Kenneth und Mary Martin, 1989, no. 31.
London, Annely Juda Fine Art, Kenneth Martin: the chance and order series, screw mobiles and related works: 1953-1984, January - February 1999, exhibition not numbered.
London, Camden Arts Centre, Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin: Constructed Works, July - September 2007, exhibition not numbered: this exhibition travelled to St Ives, Tate Gallery, October 2007 - January 2008; and Bexhill on Sea, De La Warr Pavilion, January - April 2008.
London, Austin Desmond Fine Art, Abstraction-Creation: Post-War Geometric Abstract Art from Europe and South America, September - October 2010, no. 31.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Lot Essay

'In 1969 I realised I could develop drawings by the use of chance. I could make sequence independent of my personality. I could be the spectator. Hence Chance and Order. These works were not made by knowledge or erudition. All was discarded except a numbered field, the character of the activity of the drawing of lines and my sense of art with which to start at the beginning again’
(see K. Martin, Chance and Order, The Sixth William Townsend Lecture 1979, London, 1979).

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