Art of Birmingham - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

has a distinctive culture of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

and design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

, dominated by the historic importance of the applied art

Applied art

Applied art is the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or...

s to the city's manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

economy. While other early industrial towns such as Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

and Bradford

Bradford

Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...

were based on the manufacture of bulk commodities such as cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

and wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

, Birmingham's economy from the 18th century onwards was built on the production of finished manufactured goods for European luxury markets. Design was critical to the marketability of these products, and this resulted in the early growth of an extensive infrastructure for the education of artists and designers

Art education

Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...

and for exhibiting their works

Art exhibition

Art exhibitions are traditionally the space in which art objects meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhibition". In American English, they may be called "exhibit", "exposition" or...

, and placed Birmingham at the heart of debate about the role of the visual arts in the emerging industrial society.

The city's history in the fine arts also betrays this influence, with many of Birmingham's most notable artistic figures coming from a commercial or craft background. David Cox

David Cox (artist)

- David Cox Junior :David Cox had a son of the same name who followed his calling as a watercolour painter. He was born in Dulwich, but educated in Hereford. He exhibited in London from 1827, although today he is known mainly through association with his father. He died in Streatham on 4 December...

originally trained as a painter of theatrical scenery

Theatrical scenery

Theatrical scenery is that which is used as a setting for a theatrical production. Scenery may be just about anything, from a single chair to an elaborately re-created street, no matter how large or how small, whether or not the item was custom-made or is, in fact, the genuine item, appropriated...

; Walter Langley

Walter Langley

Walter Langley was an English painter and founder of the Newlyn School of plein air artists. He was born in Birmingham and his father was a journeyman tailor. At 15 he was apprenticed to a lithographer. At 21 he won a scholarship to South Kensington and he studied designing there for two years...

and David Bomberg

David Bomberg

David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington...

were both lithographers

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

; the artists of the Birmingham Group practiced metalwork, book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

illustration

Illustration

An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...

and stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

manufacture as well as painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

; while backgrounds in advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

and commercial graphic design

Graphic design

Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

were key influences on the surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

of Conroy Maddox

Conroy Maddox

Conroy Maddox , was an English surrealist painter, collagist, writer and lecturer; and a key figure in the Birmingham Surrealist movement....

and the pop art

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

of Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips (artist)

You also may be looking for Pete Rock.Peter Phillips is an English artist who is one of the pioneers of the Pop Art movement...

.

Birmingham's artistic influence has extended well beyond its borders: David Cox

David Cox (artist)

was a major figure of the Golden Age of English watercolour and an early precursor of impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

; Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...

was the dominant figure of late-Victorian English art and an influence on Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

, the Aesthetic movement, and Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...

; David Bomberg

David Bomberg

was one of the pioneers of English modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

; and Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips (artist)

You also may be looking for Pete Rock.Peter Phillips is an English artist who is one of the pioneers of the Pop Art movement...

was one of the key figures in the birth of pop art

Pop art

. The sculptor Raymond Mason and the designers John Baskerville

John Baskerville

John Baskerville was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and typographer.-Life:...

, Augustus Pugin

Augustus Pugin

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was an English architect, designer, and theorist of design, now best remembered for his work in the Gothic Revival style, particularly churches and the Palace of Westminster. Pugin was the father of E. W...

, Harry Weedon

Harry Weedon

Harold William "Harry" Weedon was an English architect. Although he designed a large number of buildings during a long career, he is best known for his role overseeing the Art Deco designs of the Odeon Cinemas for Oscar Deutsch in the 1930s...

and Alec Issigonis

Alec Issigonis

Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis, CBE, FRS was a Greek-British designer of cars, now remembered chiefly for the groundbreaking and influential development of the Mini, launched by the British Motor Corporation in 1959.- Early life:Issigonis was born into the Greek community of Smyrna ...

are all major figures in the history of their fields, while more widely the city has been a notable centre of the Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

, Pictorialist

Pictorialism

‎Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...

and Surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

movements, and within the fields of metalwork, typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

, sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, printmaking

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

, photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

and stained glass

Stained glass

Art and the Midlands Enlightenment

Birmingham's tradition in applied arts such as jewellery

Jewellery

Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...

and metalwork predates the industrial revolution, but organised activity in the fine arts of drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

, painting

Painting

and printmaking

Printmaking

began only in the late 18th century, with the town's huge growth in size and wealth and the growing cultural sophistication of the Midlands Enlightenment

Midlands Enlightenment

The Midlands Enlightenment, also known as the West Midlands Enlightenment or the Birmingham Enlightenment, was a cultural manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment that developed in Birmingham and the wider English Midlands during the second half of the eighteenth century.At the core of the...

. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

met an Irish painter in Birmingham in the 1730s who taught him to "live in a garret at eighteen pence a week", and the growing realisation of the importance of design skills to the town's manufacturers saw the establishment of several schools of drawing by the 1760s. As late as 1779, however, Catherine Hutton

Catherine Hutton

Catherine Hutton was an English novelist and letter-writer.Born in Birmingham, the daughter of historian William Hutton, Hutton became a friend of the scientist and discoverer of oxygen Joseph Priestley and the novelist Robert Bage...

could still wryly remark that "the genius of the artists of Birmingham is more calculated to paint tea boards than pictures", and it is notable that the eighteenth century industrialist Matthew Boulton

Matthew Boulton

Matthew Boulton, FRS was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the...

– normally a loyal patron of local culture – turned to artists from outside Birmingham when commissioning portraits of himself and his family.

A century later the London-based Magazine of Art could describe Birmingham as "perhaps the most artistic town in England", and the changes that would result in this transformation had already started by the 1780s. A local trade directory of 1785 lists twenty four professional artists, including the portraitist

Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...

James Millar, the still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

painter Moses Haughton

Moses Haughton the elder

Moses Haughton, sometimes spelt Horton was an English designer, engraver and painter of portraits and still life.-Life and work:Haughton was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire and baptised on 27 March 1735...

and the portrait miniature

Portrait miniature

A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...

painter James Bisset

James Bisset

James Bisset was a Scottish-born artist, manufacturer, writer, collector, art dealer and poet, who spent most of his life in and around Birmingham, England....

. By then a drawing academy had been established in Great Charles Street by the artist Joseph Barber

Joseph Barber

Joseph Barber was an English landscape painter and art teacher.Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Barber moved to Birmingham in the 1770s, where he worked painting papier-mâché and japanned goods. By the mid-1880s he was well established as the town's first drawing master, with an academy training...

, which was continued after his death in 1811 by his son Vincent Barber

Vincent Barber

Joseph Vincent Barber , known as Vincent Barber, was an English landscape painter and art teacher.Born in Birmingham, the son of artist and drawing master Joseph Barber, he took over the running of his father's drawing academy in Great Charles Street on the elder Barber's death in 1811...

. The elder Barber's pupil Samuel Lines

Samuel Lines

Samuel Lines was an English designer, painter and art teacher.A significant figure in the development of art in Birmingham during its rapid growth in the early nineteenth century, Lines pioneered the teaching of drawing and painting in the town and was one of the founders of the life drawing...

established a second academy in nearby Newhall Street

Newhall Street

Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England.Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driveway to New Hall occupied by the Colmore family...

in 1807.

It is from these roots that the first Birmingham artists to gain wider recognition emerged. Thomas Creswick

Thomas Creswick

Thomas Creswick was an English landscape painter and illustrator.-Biography:Creswick was born in Sheffield . He was the son of Thomas Creswick and Mary Epworth and educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham.At Birmingham he first began to paint...

, a pupil of both Lines and Barber, was to become a notable Royal Academician in the 1850s and 1860s, while the Birmingham School of engravers

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

– formed around the younger Barber's pupils William Radclyffe

William Radclyffe

William Radclyffe was an English engraver and painter.Born in Birmingham and self educated, he was apprenticed to a letter engraver and studied drawing under Joseph Barber with his cousin John Pye...

, James Tibbitts Willmore and John Pye, and Lines' pupil William Wyon

William Wyon

William Wyon, RA , was official chief engraver at the Royal Mint from 1828 until his death. He was influenced by the master of relief sculpture, John Flaxman. Wyon was a highly visible proponent of the Neoclassicist vogue, and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1838.Wyon was born in Birmingham,...

– dominated high-quality printmaking in Europe in the 1850s and 1860s and revolutionised the art of book illustration, bringing contemporary art to a much wider public than ever before.

By far the most significant figure to emerge from these early academies, however – the most important Birmingham artist of the early to mid nineteenth century and the first to have an international influence – was the landscape painter David Cox

David Cox (artist)

. Born in Deritend

Deritend

Deritend is an historic area of Birmingham, England, built around a crossing point of the River Rea. It is first mentioned in 1276. Today Deritend is usually considered to be part of Digbeth.-History:...

in 1783, Cox studied under Joseph Barber in Birmingham and under Cornelius Varley

Cornelius Varley

Cornelius Varley was an English water-colour painter.-Biography:Varley was born at Hackney, London, on the 21 November 1781. He was a younger brother of John Varley, a watercolour painter and astrologer, and a close friend of William Blake, he was born in Hackney, London...

in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where his mastery of watercolour made him a major figure of the medium's "Golden Age".

In 1841 Cox returned to Birmingham to live in Harborne

Harborne

Harborne is an area three miles southwest from Birmingham city centre, England. It is a Birmingham City Council ward in the formal district and in the parliamentary constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston.- Geography :...

and concentrate on painting in oils

Oil paint

Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...

. Long overshadowed by the fame of his earlier watercolours, these later works have more recently attracted attention as "one of the greatest, but least recognised, achievements of any British painter." Cox's technique and approach in paintings such as Rhyl Sands (ca. 1854) – described by the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

as "without parallel in British landscape painting of the 1850s" – have led to his being seen, particularly within France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, as an important precursor of impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

. His pictures were exhibited in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

to wide acclaim in 1855 and are known to have been studied by Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

and Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

during their stay in London in 1870.

Institutional development

The first decades of the 19th century saw the gradual development of the institutions that would come to dominate the artistic life of Victorian Birmingham. In 1809 a group of eight artists including Samuel Lines

Samuel Lines

, Charles Barber and Vincent Barber

Vincent Barber

opened an academy of life drawing in Peck Lane, now the site of New Street railway station. This held its first exhibition of members' work in 1814 as the Birmingham Academy of Arts, and was refounded as the Birmingham Society of Arts under the patronage of wealthy local businessmen in 1821.

The society was dogged by continual tension between its two roles: to its members the society was primarily for promoting Birmingham's artists and exhibiting their work, but to its wealthy patrons its importance was more as a training ground for designers needed for the town's manufacturing industries. This gave rise to a temporary split in 1821 over the patrons' decision to hold an exhibition of old masters instead of members' works. A second, permanent, split took place in 1842, the patrons forming the Society of Arts and Government School of Design - later the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, its Grade I listed building on...

- while the artists formed the separate Birmingham Society of Artists, which received royal patronage in 1868 as the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an art gallery based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. it is both a registered charity. and a registered company The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an...

.

By the 1820s Birmingham was supporting a vigorous market for contemporary art. While most British towns other than London

London

relied on booksellers

Bookselling

Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers or bookmen.-Bookstores today:...

and carvers

Wood carving

Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object...

-and-gilders

Gilding

The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...

for the sale of pictures, Birmingham had specialist art dealer

Art dealer

An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art. Art dealers' professional associations serve to set high standards for accreditation or membership and to support art exhibitions and shows.-Role:...

s such as Allen Everitt – whose Artists' Repository and Exhibition of Pictures in Union Street opened in 1811 and which held regular exhibitions from 1817 – and Jones' Pantechnetheca in New Street, which opened in 1824 and where the walls of the picture gallery were "hung with a succession of paintings by the most able ancient and modern masters". A 1819 letter to the painter John Constable

John Constable

John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...

remarked that "we have picture sellers everywhere in Birmingham".

Birmingham was also an important centre for Victorian art patronage

Patronage

Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...

, as the home of major collectors such as Joseph Gillott

Joseph Gillott

Joseph Gillott was an English pen-maker and patron of the arts.- Pen manufacturing :For some time he was a working cutler in his home town Sheffield, but in 1821 he moved to Birmingham, where he found employment in the steel toy trade, the technical name for the manufacture of steel buckles,...

, Edwin Sharp and William Bullock. Gillott in particular had one of the largest and most important collections of the day. An early patron of Turner

J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...

, he lay at the centre of a nationwide network of dealers, collectors and artists.

With this growth in Birmingham's artistic organisation came a more established artistic community. Birmingham had had only four professional artists in 1800, but by 1827 the overwhelming majority of the 67 local exhibitors at that year's Society of Arts exhibition were earning their living from the arts, as portraitists

Portrait painting

, miniaturists

Portrait miniature

, engravers

Engraving

, or painters of still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

or landscape

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

. Helen Allingham

Helen Allingham

__NOEDITSECTION__Helen Allingham was an English watercolour painter and illustrator of the Victorian era.-Biography:...

was the first of a notable series of woman artists to study at the School of Art from the 1850s, that later featured Florence Camm, Kate Bunce

Kate Bunce

Kate Elizabeth Bunce was an English painter and poet associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.The daughter of John Thackray Bunce – a patron of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and editor of the Birmingham Post during its Liberal heyday – Bunce was born in Birmingham and educated at home...

and Georgie Gaskin

Georgie Gaskin

Georgina Evelyn Cave Gaskin , known as Georgie Gaskin, was an English jewellery and metalwork designer....

.

The most prominent members of a generation of young painters from the School of Art were elected as the Society of Artists' first associates in the 1860s, including Walter Langley

Walter Langley

, William Wainwright, Frank Bramley

Frank Bramley

Frank Bramley was an English post-impressionist genre painter of the Newlyn School.-Life and work:Bramley was born in Sibsey in Lincolnshire and studied at the Lincoln School of Art from 1873 to 1878, later under Charles Verlat at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp from 1879 to 1882...

and Edwin Harris

Edwin Harris

Edwin Harris was an English painter from Birmingham. He entered the Birmingham School of Art at the age of fourteen. He settled in Newlyn, Cornwall in 1883 and stayed there for twelve years.-References:...

. Of these the most significant was Langley, whose move to the Cornish

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

fishing village of Newlyn

Newlyn

Newlyn is a town and fishing port in southwest Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.Newlyn forms a conurbation with the neighbouring town of Penzance and is part of Penzance civil parish...

in 1882 made him the first of the Newlyn School

Newlyn School

The Newlyn School is a term used to describe an art colony of artists based in or near to Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early 20th century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists...

of plein air painters. Although he was later joined by Harris, Bramley, Wainwright and numerous London

London

artists including Stanhope Forbes

Stanhope Forbes

Stanhope Alexander Forbes R.A., , was an artist and member of the influential Newlyn school of painters...

, Langley's work remained vital to the image of the Newlyn School and was matched only by that of Forbes for substance and consistency. His watercolour In faith and hope the world will disagree. But all mankind's concern is charity was singled out as "a beautiful and true work of art" by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

in his book What is Art?
What Is Art?
"What Is Art?" is an essay by Leo Tolstoy in which he argues against numerous aesthetic theories which define art in terms of the good, truth, and especially beauty...

and in 1895 Langley was invited by the Uffizi

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

to contribute a self portrait to hang alongside those of Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Rubens

Rubens

Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...

and Rembrandt in their collection of portraits of great artists.

Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites

Birmingham was already being recognised as a centre of Pre-Raphaelitism

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...

by the 1850s. At a time when the controversial new movement was still exciting the hostility of the London press, the 1852 exhibition of Millais

John Everett Millais

Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...

' Ophelia
Ophelia (painting)
Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed between 1851-52. Currently held in the Tate Britain in London, it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark....

at the annual exhibition of the Birmingham Society of Artists

Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

provoked the radical Birmingham Journal
Birmingham Journal (nineteenth century)
The Birmingham Journal was a weekly newspaper published in Birmingham, England between 1825 and 1869.A nationally-influential voice in the Chartist movement in the 1830s, it was sold to John Frederick Feeney in 1844 and was a direct ancestor of today's Birmingham Post.-History:The newspaper was...

- the town's most popular newspaper - to display a front page article analysing the picture, praising its "erratic genius" and "independent thought" and contrasting it with the "traditions of the schools" and the "slavish reproduction of the academy models". Further Pre-Raphaelite works were sought the following year, with Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt

William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...

's Strayed Sheep being singled out as "one that ought to be studied ... with an intelligent appreciation of its peculiar beauties and special teachings." Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

would later write to his son "It is a pity you were not able to go to Birmingham to see the assembled masters of Pre-Raphaelitism ... the provinces in England are more sympathetic to innovation."

It was from this environment that Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

emerged to become the most influential of all Birmingham artists, establishing himself as the dominant figure of late-Victorian English art and bringing the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelites decisively into the mainstream. Born on Bennetts Hill

Bennetts Hill

Bennetts Hill is a street in the Core area of Birmingham City Centre, United Kingdom. It runs from New Street, uphill to Colmore Row, crossing Waterloo Street in the process.-History:...

in 1833 he studied at King Edward's School

King Edward's School, Birmingham

King Edward's School is an independent secondary school in Birmingham, England, founded by King Edward VI in 1552. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and is widely regarded as one of the most academically successful schools in the country, according to...

, the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

and Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

, where he met his lifelong friend and collaborator William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

. Leaving Oxford without graduating, he fell under the influence of John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

and worked in the studio of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

.

Burne-Jones' early work was heavily influenced by Rossetti, but by the 1860s he was increasingly incorporating the influence of painters of the early Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

, and himself becoming an influence on younger artists such as Walter Crane

Walter Crane

Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...

and Simeon Solomon

Simeon Solomon

Simeon Solomon was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter-Biography:...

. He retired from public exhibition for much of the 1870s, but his return in 1877 was to prove a sensation, with him established as probably the most celebrated artist of his generation. He was to be widely influential on the Symbolists

Symbolism (arts)

, the Aesthetic movement, and Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

The Birmingham Group

The 1890s saw the emergence of a loosely-connected group of like-minded radical artists who would later became known as the Birmingham Group. All had studied at the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

after the reorganisation of its teaching methods by Edward R. Taylor

Edward R. Taylor

Edward Richard Taylor RBSA was an English artist and educator. He painted in both oils and watercolours.Taylor taught at the Lincoln School of Art and became influential in the Arts and Crafts movement as the first headmaster at the Birmingham Municipal School of Arts and Crafts from 1877-1903.In...

in the 1880s, and all had been deeply imbued with the philosophy and practices of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

, of which they were to become leading exponents. Many went on to teach at the school and become associated with other more formal organisations such as the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft or the Bromsgrove Guild

Bromsgrove Guild

The Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts was a company of modern artists and designers associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, founded by Walter Gilbert. The guild worked in metal, wood, plaster, bronze, tapestry, glass and other mediums....

Breaking down the distinction between the fine and applied arts was a key aim of the movement, and Birmingham Group artists practiced across a variety of disciplines, producing stained glass

Stained glass

, jewellery

Jewellery

, metalwork, embroidery

Embroidery

Embroidery is the art or handicraft of decorating fabric or other materials with needle and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins....

, hand printed books and furniture

Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...

as well as pictures. In painting they emphasised the role of a picture in the context of a wider work or space, often producing mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

s or fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

s for specific buildings, presenting easel pictures in custom-built frames considered integral to the work of art, and working in exacting media such as tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

or watercolour on vellum

Vellum

Vellum is mammal skin prepared for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, codices or books. It is generally smooth and durable, although there are great variations depending on preparation, the quality of the skin and the type of animal used...

, where the creation of the materials was an essential part of the creation of the work.

The first indication of the rise of a distinctive group artists was the 1893 commission of a set of murals for Birmingham Town Hall

Birmingham Town Hall

Birmingham Town Hall is a Grade I listed concert and meeting venue in Victoria Square, Birmingham, England. It was created as a home for the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival established in 1784, the purpose of which was to raise funds for the General Hospital, after St Philip's Church became...

from artists including Kate Bunce

Kate Bunce

, Henry Payne

Henry Payne (artist)

Henry Arthur Payne RWS was an English stained glass artist, watercolourist and painter of frescoes.Payne was one of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen who formed around Joseph Southall and the Birmingham School of Art in the late nineteenth century...

, Charles March Gere

Charles March Gere

Charles March Gere, RA, RWS was an English painter, illustrator of books, and stained glass and embroidery designer associated with the Arts and Crafts movement....

, Sidney Meteyard

Sidney Meteyard

Sidney Harold Meteyard RBSA was an English art teacher, painter and stained glass designer. A member of the Birmingham Group, he worked in a late Pre-Raphaelite style heavily influenced by Edward Burne-Jones and the Arts and Crafts Movement.-Life and career:Meteyard was born in Stourbridge and...

and Bernard Sleigh

Bernard Sleigh

Bernard Sleigh was an English mural painter, stained-glass artist, illustrator and wood engraver, best known for his work An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth which is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.-Education and work:Sleigh was apprenticed to a wood...

, while most were still students. The group's greatest collective work was the later decoration of the interior of the chapel of Madresfield Court

Madresfield Court

Madresfield Court is a country house in England, in the village of Madresfield near Malvern in Worcestershire. The stately home, near the village centre has been the ancestral home for several centuries of the Lygon family, whose eldest sons took the title of Earl Beauchamp from 1815 until 1979,...

near Malvern

Malvern, Worcestershire

Malvern is a town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, governed by Malvern Town Council. As of the 2001 census it has a population of 28,749, and includes the historical settlement and commercial centre of Great Malvern on the steep eastern flank of the Malvern Hills, and the former...

in 1902, which featured frescoes and stained glass by Payne, an altarpiece by Gere and a crucifix designed and made by Arthur

Arthur Gaskin

Arthur Joseph Gaskin RBSA was an English illustrator, painter, teacher and designer of jewellery and enamelwork....

and Georgie Gaskin

Georgie Gaskin

Georgina Evelyn Cave Gaskin , known as Georgie Gaskin, was an English jewellery and metalwork designer....

.

The key individual artist however was Joseph Southall

Joseph Southall

Joseph Edward Southall RWS NEAC RBSA was an English painter associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.A leading figure in the nineteenth century revival of painting in tempera, Southall was the leader of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen—one of the last outposts of Romanticism in...

, arguably the most important of all Arts and Crafts painters and the leader of the revival of painting in tempera

Tempera

in the late 1880s. Although he never taught at the School of Art, he provided training in tempera techniques at his studio in Edgbaston to other group members such as Arthur Gaskin

Arthur Gaskin

Arthur Joseph Gaskin RBSA was an English illustrator, painter, teacher and designer of jewellery and enamelwork....

and Maxwell Armfield

Maxwell Armfield

Maxwell Ashby Armfield was an English artist, illustrator and writer.Born to a Quaker family in Ringwood, Hampshire, Armfield was educated at Sidcot School and at Leighton Park School. In 1887 he was admitted to Birmingham School of Art, then under the headmastership of Edward R...

, and exhibited widely internationally, particularly in France

France

, where he was widely admired.

While the influence of Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

and the Pre-Raphaelites on the Birmingham Group is clear, modern scholarship has also seen links with later movements in art. The Last Romantics exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in 1989 positioned the group as the link connecting the romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

of the Pre-Raphaelites to that of the later symbolists

Symbolism (arts)

of the Slade School. Southall himself has been seen as a precursor of surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, with John Russell Taylor

John Russell Taylor

John Russell Taylor is an English critic and author. He is the author of critical studies of British theatre; of critical biographies of such important figures in Anglo-American film as Alfred Hitchcock, Alec Guinness, Orson Welles, Vivien Leigh, and Ingrid Bergman; of Strangers in Paradise: The...

writing that "there is undoubtedly an authentic strangeness in the way he saw things ... we are much more likely to find ourselves thinking of Magritte and Balthus

Balthus

Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....

and Chirico than of anyone nearer to this apparently stick-in-the-mud Arts-and-Craftsman."

Twentieth century

After the Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

and Pre-Raphaelite triumphs of the late nineteenth century, the early twentieth century was marked by a prevailing conservatism among Birmingham's major artistic institutions. The Arts and Crafts consensus established at the School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

and Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

Royal Birmingham Society of Artists

in the 1880s held firm, and new generations of painters tended to either maintain an academic figurative style – Bernard Fleetwood-Walker

Bernard Fleetwood-Walker

Bernard Fleetwood-Walker was an English artist and teacher of painting.Bernard Fleetwood-Walker was born on the 22 March 1893 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, a twin and one of five children...

being among the more notable examples – or prosper elsewhere. By 1930 even Solomon Kaines Smith, the keeper of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and himself hardly a radical figure, was commenting in the Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...

that "you are actually reducing and throwing back the possibilities and progress of your own city by basing yourself solely on 1890".

More progressive figures were few and their connections with Birmingham slight: Malcolm Drummond

Malcolm Drummond

Malcolm Cyril Drummond was an English artist, noted for his paintings of urban scenes and interiors. Influenced by the Post-Impressionists and Walter Sickert, he was a member of the Camden Town Group and the London Group.-Life:...

, later a member of the Camden Town Group

Camden Town Group

The Camden Town Group was a group of English Post-Impressionist artists active 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area of London.-History:...

, was educated at The Oratory School

The Oratory School

The Oratory School is a Roman Catholic, independent school for boys in Woodcote, Berkshire. It is the last Catholic all-boys boarding school remaining in Great Britain. It has approximately 420 pupils...

in Edgbaston

Edgbaston

Edgbaston is an area in the city of Birmingham in England. It is also a formal district, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Edgbaston ward and the wards of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton....

; and Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist...

, who became a stalwart of the New English Art Club

New English Art Club

The New English Art Club was founded in London in 1885 as an alternate venue to the Royal Academy.-History:Young English artists returning from studying art in Paris mounted the first exhibition of the New English Art Club in April 1886...

and was to train an entire generation of English modernists at London's Slade School of Art around the turn of the century, was brought up in a family of Birmingham brass foundry proprietors.

The most radical artist associated with the city during this period was David Bomberg

David Bomberg

, who was born to a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

-Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

family on Sutton Street in the Lee Bank

Lee Bank

Lee Bank is an inner city area of Birmingham, England. It is part of the Edgbaston and Ladywood wards, inside the Middle Ring Road, near to the centre of Birmingham...

area of Birmingham in 1890. Growing up in Whitechapel

Whitechapel

Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...

in the East End of London

East End of London

The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...

he returned to Birmingham to train as a lithographer before studying under the Birmingham-born Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks

Henry Tonks, FRCS was a British draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist...

at the Slade School of Art. Loosely associated with the vorticist movement, he was one of the few English artists to wholeheartedly embrace cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

and futurism

Futurism

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...

in the years leading up to the First World War, painting a series of strikingly angular works before his disillusionment with the mechanised slaughter of World War I led him to develop a more representational style from the 1920s onwards. Virtually forgotten by the time of his death in 1956, his influence has grown since. The New York Times described him as a "neglected British genius" in 1988, and by 2006 Richard Cork

Richard Cork

Dr Richard Cork is a British art historian, editor, critic, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He has been an art critic for the Evening Standard, The Listener, The Times and the New Statesman. Cork was also editor for Studio International. He is a past Turner Prize judge.-Life and work:Richard...

could remark that Bomberg was "now considered one of the most important and influential British painters of the twentieth century".

Birmingham's printmaking

Printmaking

tradition revived with a generation of influential etchers

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

in the 1930s. Henry Rushbury

Henry Rushbury

Sir Henry George "Harry" Rushbury was an English painter and etcher.Born the son of a clerk in Harborne, then on the outskirts of Birmingham, Rushbury studied on a scholarship under Robert Catterson Smith at the Birmingham School of Art from the age of thirteen...

worked under Henry Payne

Henry Payne (artist)

and illustrated notable books on the architecture of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

and Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

before becoming Keeper of the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

from 1949 to 1964. Gerald Brockhurst

Gerald Brockhurst

Gerald Leslie Brockhurst was an English painter and etcher.During the 1930s and 1940s he was celebrated as a portraitist, painting society figures such as Marlene Dietrich and the Duchess of Windsor...

– dubbed a "young Botticelli" when he entered the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

at the age of 12 – became one of the best known and most celebrated portraitists

Portrait painting

, first in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

and then in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, painting over 600 portraits including those of Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

and the Duchess of Windsor. He is best known for his etchings, however, which are "among the most suavely realized and technically adept works of art in any period" and "epitomize an elegance and panache that we associate with the decades between the two world wars."

The Birmingham Surrealists

The most sustained challenge to Birmingham's Arts and Crafts consensus came from the Birmingham Surrealists

Birmingham Surrealists

The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s....

, who emerged as a group from 1935 and whose leading figures included the painters Conroy Maddox

Conroy Maddox

Conroy Maddox , was an English surrealist painter, collagist, writer and lecturer; and a key figure in the Birmingham Surrealist movement....

, John Melville

John Melville

John Melville was an English surrealist artist, described by Michel Remy in his book Surrealism in Britain as one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Great Britain....

and Emmy Bridgwater

Emmy Bridgwater

Emma Frith Bridgwater , known as Emmy Bridgwater, was an English artist and poet associated with the Surrealist movement....

, the art critic Robert Melville

Robert Melville (art critic)

Robert Melville was an English art critic and journalist.Along with the artists Conroy Maddox and John Melville , he was a key member of the Birmingham Surrealists in the 1930s and 1940s...

and later the artists Desmond Morris

Desmond Morris

Desmond John Morris, born 24 January 1928 in Purton, north Wiltshire, is a British zoologist and ethologist, as well as a popular anthropologist. He is also known as a painter, television presenter and popular author.-Life:...

and Oscar Mellor

Oscar Mellor

Oscar Mellor was an English surrealist artist and publisher of poetry. An associate of the Birmingham Surrealists in the 1940s, he founded the Fantasy Press in the 1950s, publishing works by poets such as Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn.Although he became best known as a publisher, he...

. John Melville had been one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Britain, being identified as a surrealist by 1932, and he and Maddox did much to advance British surrealist practice by introducing the principle of visual distortion.

The early years of the group were marked by a conscious rejection not just of Birmingham's artistic conservatism – John Melville having six paintings banned from an exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1938 for being "detremental (sic) to public sensibility" – but also what they saw as the inauthenticity of the Surrealist Group in England, which had formed in London

London

around Roland Penrose

Roland Penrose

Sir Roland Algernon Penrose CBE was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom.- Biography :...

and Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

. The London group, it was felt, "did not understand surrealism", reducing it to a mere continuation of English romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, and the Birmingham artists concentrated instead on building links with what they saw as the more authentic surrealists on the continent. This culminated in the open letter sent by Maddox and the Melvilles refusing to exhibit at the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition

London International Surrealist Exhibition

The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from 11 June to 4 July 1936 at the New Burlington Galleries in London, England.The exhibition was organised by:* Hugh Sykes Davies* David Gascoyne* Humphrey Jennings* Rupert Lee* Diana Brinton Lee...

, decrying the presence of "artists who in their day to day activities, professional habits and ethics could be called anti-surrealist".

The relationship between the surrealists of London and Birmingham improved greatly with the arrival in London in mid-1938 of the Belgian E. L. T. Mesens, who had some sympathy with the Birmingham artists' views and whose role as Director of the London Gallery made him effectively the leader of London surrealism. Maddox was invited to the group's October 1938 meeting at the personal insistence of André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

and both he and Melville exhibited in the Living Art in England exhibition of 1939. The major Birmingham artists joined the Surrealist Group in England over the following year and were to form the group's most dynamic members during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

and through the subsequent years of the decade. Robert Melville

Robert Melville (art critic)

Robert Melville was an English art critic and journalist.Along with the artists Conroy Maddox and John Melville , he was a key member of the Birmingham Surrealists in the 1930s and 1940s...

played a key role in the conception of Toni del Renzio

Toni del Renzio

Antonino Romanov del Renzio dei Rossi di Castellone e Venosa , an artist and writer of Italian and Russian parentage, was leader of the British Surrealist Group for a period....

's publication Arson in 1942 and Maddox was the organiser with John Banting

John Banting

John Banting was an English artist and writer.Born in London and educated at Emanuel School, Banting was initially attracted to vorticism and associated with the Bloomsbury Group, before becoming interested in surrealism in Paris in the 1930s...

of 1940's notoriously confrontational Surrealism Today exhibition. In 1947 Maddox and Bridgwater featured among only six English artists selected by André Breton

André Breton

for the final International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, but with British surrealism viewed as a spent force in the post-war era the group broke up in the early 1950s.

Post-war art

Birmingham artists took leading international roles in several artistic developments during the post-war period. Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips (artist)

You also may be looking for Pete Rock.Peter Phillips is an English artist who is one of the pioneers of the Pop Art movement...

, who was born in the city and both studied and taught at the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

, was one of the central figures in the birth of Pop Art

Pop art

. In the early 1960s he produced some of the movement's earliest works, combining the influence of his Birmingham training in advertising

Advertising

and technical drawing

Technical drawing

Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....

with the layout and structure of early Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

s. His presidency of the 1961 Young Contemporaries exhibition was pivotal to the emergence of British Pop Art as a coherent and widely-recognised phenomenon.

William Gear

William Gear

William Gear was a painter, born on 2 August 1915 in Methil in the south-east of Fife, Scotland. Born into a mining family, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art before travelling to Paris to study with Fernand Léger....

– a student of Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

and the only British member of the avant-garde CoBrA

Cobra

Cobra is a venomous snake belonging to the family Elapidae. However, not all snakes commonly referred to as cobras are of the same genus, or even of the same family. The name is short for cobra capo or capa Snake, which is Portuguese for "snake with hood", or "hood-snake"...

movement – had close links with Birmingham, exhibiting with the Birmingham Artists Committee

Birmingham Artists Committee

The Birmingham Artists Committee was an English artist collective that organised exhibitions of painting and sculpture in Birmingham between 1947 and 1952....

and forming links with the Birmingham Surrealists

Birmingham Surrealists

The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s....

in the 1940s, before finally moving to the city to teach at the School of Art in 1964. Later that decade John Salt

John Salt

John Salt is an English artist, whose obsessively detailed paintings from the late 1960s onwards made him one of the pioneers of the photorealist school....

's obsessively-detailed paintings of car

Čar

Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...

s and mobile home

Mobile home

Mobile homes or static caravans are prefabricated homes built in factories, rather than on site, and then taken to the place where they will be occupied...

s in the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

landscape made him the only major English artist among the pioneers of photorealism

Photorealism

Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

.

More locally, the formation of the Ikon Gallery

Ikon Gallery

The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.Ikon was set up to...

in the 1960s provided a focus for a distinctive group of artists including David Prentice

David Prentice

David Prentice is an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 he was one of the four founder members of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery....

, Trevor Denning

Trevor Denning

Trevor Denning RBSA was an English artist, sculptor, writer, and former art teacher.-Biography:Denning was born in Moseley, Birmingham, studying painting and graphics at the Birmingham School of Art from 1938 to 1942 and teaching there between 1945 and 1985.In 1947 he was one of the founders of the...

, Robert Groves

Robert Groves

Air Commodore Robert Marsland Groves CB DSO AFC RAF was a Royal Navy officer involved with naval aviation during World War I. He was awarded his Aviator's Certificate no. 969 on 15 November 1914. After transferring to the Royal Air Force in 1918, he served as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff and held...

, Jesse Bruton and Sylvani Merilion

Sylvani Merilion

Sylvani Merilion is an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 she was one of the four founder members of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery....

Birmingham's highly cosmopolitan population was an increasing influence on its art in the late twentieth century. The formation of the BLK Art Group

BLK Art Group

The BLK Art Group was the name chosen in 1982 by a group of four influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom...

in the early 1980s by Black British

Black British

Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...

Birmingham artists Keith Piper

Keith Piper (artist)

Keith Piper is a British artist, curator, critic and academic. He was a founder member of the BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students, mostly based in the West Midlands region of the UK. His work explores multi-media elements such as tape/slide, sound and video within an...

, Donald Rodney

Donald Rodney

Donald Gladstone Rodney was a British artist. He was a leading figure in Britain's BLK Art Group of the 1980s and became recognised as "one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation." Rodney's work appropriated images from the mass media, art and popular culture to explore...

and Marlene Smith

Marlene Smith

Marlene Smith was a Canadian figure skater who competed in both pairs and ladies singles. In pairs, she won the gold medal at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships with partner Donald Gilchrist in 1949 and 1950...

, together with Eddie Chambers

Eddie Chambers

Edward "Eddie" Chambers is an American heavyweight boxer fighting out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Professional career:Eddie started boxing professionally in 2000 at the age of 18...

from nearby Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...

, was a pivotal point in the establishment of the non-white experience as an integral part of British culture. Members of the group acted as activists, curators and promoters to challenge the white establishment of the art world; their art drew on the language both of American Black Nationalism

Black nationalism

Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...

and indigenous English identity, while they simultaneously challenged Black culture itself to move away from being defined by heterosexual black males.

The late twentieth century also saw the growth of alternative art forms. The Birmingham Arts Lab

Birmingham Arts Lab

The Birmingham Arts Laboratory or Arts Lab was an experimental arts centre and artist collective based in Birmingham, England from 1968 to 1982 – an "arts and performance space dedicated to radical research into art and creativity"...

nurtured an influential generation working in comic art in the late 1960s and 1970s, including Suzy Varty, Ed Barker

Edward Barker (cartoonist)

John Edward Barker was an English cartoonist, best known for his work in International Times and The Observer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the comic strip "The Largactilites" . He was described as "the wittiest and most idiosyncratic cartoonist to emerge from the British...

, Steve Bell

Steve Bell (cartoonist)

Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...

and Hunt Emerson

Hunt Emerson

Hunt Emerson is a cartoonist living and working in Birmingham, England. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s...

. Graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

(or "spraycan art") culture appeared in the early 1980s, with the area featuring in Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

documentary Bombing. Local artists who use urban Birmingham as their canvas (this is illegal, and regarded by some as vandalism) have included Chu and Goldie

Goldie

Clifford Joseph Price, better known as Goldie is an English electronic music artist, disc jockey, visual artist and actor. He is well known for his innovations in the jungle and drum and bass music genres, having previously gained exposure for his work as a graffiti artist...

. Street art competitions are still regularly held at the Custard Factory. In 2002 the Jewellery Quarter

Jewellery Quarter

The Jewellery Quarter is an area of Birmingham City Centre, England, situated in the south of the Hockley area. It is covered by the Ladywood district. There is a population of around 3,000 people in a area....

-based Temper was the first graffiti artist to have a solo exhibition at a major British public gallery.

Contemporary artists

Today Birmingham artists work across a wide range of subjects, styles and media. Several Birmingham artists have won or been shortlisted for the Turner Prize

Turner Prize

The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...

including the video art

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

ist Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing OBE RA is an English conceptual artist, one of the YBAs, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. On 11 December 2007, Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London....

, winner of the 1997 prize, the abstract painter

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

John Walker

John Walker (painter)

John Walker is an English painter and printmaker.Walker studied in Birmingham. Some of his early work was inspired by abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction, and often combined apparently three-dimensional shapes with "flatter" elements...

who was shortlisted in 1985, and Young British Artist Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is an English photographer and artist who is best known for his photobook Ray's A Laugh which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily-tattooed mother, Liz.-Career:...

, shortlisted in 2001.

The Digbeth

Digbeth

Digbeth is an area of Birmingham, England. Following the destruction of the Inner Ring Road, Digbeth is now considered a district within Birmingham City Centre. As part of the Big City Plan, Digbeth is undergoing a large redevelopment scheme that will regenerate the old industrial buildings into...

area of the city is particularly important in Birmingham's contemporary art scene, with numerous artists and organisations grouped in and around studio complexes like the Custard Factory

Custard Factory

The Custard Factory is an arts and media production centre in Birmingham, England .Located on the redeveloped site of the Bird's Custard factory in the industrial district of Digbeth, it is home to a community of businesses, primarily with an artistic and media slant, but also including...

, galleries such as the media art centre VIVID

VIVID (media arts)

VIVID is a centre for the production and exhibition of media art, located in the Digbeth area of Birmingham, England.Established in 1992, VIVID works with contemporary new media and artist moving image through production, commissioning, exhibition and event programmes.VIVID commissions and exhibits...

, and artist-run space

Artist-run space

An artist-run space is a gallery space run by artists, thus circumventing the structures of public and private galleries.Artist-run spaces have become realised as an important factor in urban regeneration...

s such as Eastside Projects

Eastside Projects

Eastside Projects is an artist-run space as public gallery in Digbeth, Birmingham, England.Eastside Projects was conceived by artist-curator Gavin Wade and is organised by a founding collective comprising Simon and Tom Bloor, Céline Condorelli, Ruth Claxton and James Langdon...

. Significant concentrations of artists, writers and curators also exist in the Jewellery Quarter

Jewellery Quarter

, and in Balsall Heath

Balsall Heath

Balsall Heath is a working class, inner-city area of Birmingham, England. It is home to a diverse cultural mix of people and the location of the Balti Triangle.-History:...

, Moseley

Moseley

Moseley is a suburb of Birmingham, England, two miles south of the city centre. The area is a popular cosmopolitan residential location and leisure destination, with a number of bars and restaurants...

and King's Heath in the south of the city.

A variety of contemporary public art is located around the city centre, most of it created by artists from outside the Midlands. The construction of the Bull Ring Shopping Centre included three light wand

Wand

A wand is a thin, straight, hand-held stick of wood, stone, ivory, or metal. Generally, in modern language, wands are ceremonial and/or have associations with magic but there have been other uses, all stemming from the original meaning as a synonym of rod and virge, both of which had a similar...

s which were erected at the main entrance, a huge mural on a glass façade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

located at the entrance facing New Street station

Birmingham New Street Station

Birmingham New Street is the main railway station serving Birmingham, England, located in the city centre. It is an important hub for the British railway system, being served by a number of important long-distance and cross-country lines, including the Birmingham loop of the West Coast Main Line,...

and three fountains in St Martin's Square in the shape of cube

Cube

In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...

s, which are illuminated at night in different colours.

Contemporary African Caribbean artists and photographers who have exhibited internationally include Pogus Caesar

Pogus Caesar

Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...

, Keith Piper

Keith Piper (artist)

and the late Donald Rodney

Donald Rodney

Georgian and Victorian sculpture

Birmingham is the only English city outside London to have an unbroken tradition of sculpture

Sculpture

production extending back to the mid-18th century. The town's sculpture workshops developed from earlier local traditions of working in stone and metal: there is evidence of stonemasons working in Birmingham as far back as the 14th century; richly ornamented sculptural metalwork was being produced in the town from the 17th century onwards; and humanistic small-scale figurative sculpture can be seen in the silver

Silver (household)

Household silver or silverware includes dishware, cutlery and other household items made of sterling, Britannia or Sheffield plate silver. The term is often extended to items made of stainless steel...

ware and pattern books of Matthew Boulton

Matthew Boulton

from the 1750s. The first recognisably fine art stone carver was Edward Grubb of Birmingham

Edward Grubb of Birmingham

Edward Grubb of Birmingham was an English stonemason, sculptor and artist, the first unambiguously fine art sculptor to work in Birmingham....

, who was producing ecclesiastic carvings and statuary in Birmingham by 1769. The growth of Birmingham sculpture over the following decades was rapid, and by 1829 the majority of the 49 pieces of sculpture exhibited in the town's exhibitions that year came from local artists. The leading Birmingham sculptor of the Midlands Enlightenment

Midlands Enlightenment

, however, was Peter Hollins

Peter Hollins

Peter Hollins was an English sculptor.Born in Birmingham, the son of the architect and sculptor William Hollins, Hollins studied drawing under Vincent Barber and sculpture in his father's studio before moving to London to work for Francis Chantrey in 1822...

, who took over the studio of his father William Hollins in the Jewellery Quarter

Jewellery Quarter

and produced over sixty major works. Hollins studied under Francis Chantrey in the early part of his career and his best work is considered the equal to that of Chantrey, although he was less famous at least partly because of being based outside London.

The dominance of neoclassical sculpture

Neoclassical sculpture

Neoclassical sculpture was a sculptural style of the 18th and 19th centuries. The neoclassical period was one of the great ages of public sculpture, though its "classical" prototypes were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. The neoclassical sculptors paid homage to an idea of...

lessened in the later 19th century, and the following generation of Birmingham sculptors was largely defined by its relationship with the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

, which under Edward R. Taylor

Edward R. Taylor

emphasised the relationship between high art and craftsmanship, and was closely aligned to Birmingham's dominant Civic Gospel

Civic Gospel

The Civic Gospel was a philosophy of municipal activism that emerged in Birmingham, England in the mid- to late- 19th century. Tracing its origins to the preaching of George Dawson, who preached that "a town is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the...

ideology. Albert Toft

Albert Toft

Albert Toft was a British sculptor.Toft trained in Wedgwood's pottery and studied sculpture at the South Kensington Schools under Professor Edouard Lanteri.-Notable works:...

was a prominent exponent of the New Sculpture

New Sculpture

The New Sculpture refers to a movement in late 19th-century British sculpture.The term "New Sculpture" was coined by the first historian of the movement, the critic Edmund Gosse, who wrote a four-part series for the Art Journal in 1894...

, his works exhibiting the movement's characteristic naturalism in form and spiritualism in mood. Benjamin Creswick

Benjamin Creswick

-Life:Benjamin Creswick was born in Sheffield, the son of a spectacle-maker. He started his working life as a knife-grinder, but took up sculpture with the encouragement of John Ruskin. In 1887 he modelled a terracotta frieze showing the processes of knife-grinding for the exterior of Cutlers'...

was the leading sculptor of the Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

-dominated Birmingham Group, working in a wide variety of genres and expanding the iconography of Birmingham sculpture with imagery of working men and compositions examining the relationship between arts, crafts and learning.

Twentieth century sculpture

20th century Birmingham sculpture was dominated by the figure of William Bloye

William Bloye

William James Bloye was an English sculptor, active in Birmingham either side of World War II.He studied, and later, taught at the Birmingham School of Art , where his pupils included Gordon Herickx, Raymond Mason and Ian Walters...

, who combined the arts and crafts tradition of Benjamin Creswick with the avant-garde edge of Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...

, with whom he worked at Ditchling

Ditchling

Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is contained within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park; the order confirming the establishment of the park was signed in Ditchling....

in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. Bloye was the Head of Sculpture at Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

from 1919 to 1956 and became the city's unofficial civic sculptor – producing everything from pub signs to the bas-reliefs on the city's Hall of Memory

Hall of Memory

Hall of Memory - a place , in which memorabilia associated with celebrities or some sort of historical events are stored and exibited for visitors. A hall of memory is a form of a museum place as well as a form of a memorial. The most fames one is Hall of Memory in Birmingham....

war memorial. Several generations of sculptors who trained under Bloye at the School of Art later worked as assistants at his studio in Small Heath

Small Heath, Birmingham

Small Heath is an inner-city area within the city of Birmingham, West Midlands, England. It is situated on and around the A45 ....

before establishing themselves independently, including notable figures such as John Poole

John Poole (sculptor)

A. John Poole, FRBS, Hon. FRBSA, . Was a British freelance sculptor, and winner of 2 Otto Beit medals- Early life :...

, Gordon Herickx

Gordon Herickx

Gordon Herickx was an English sculptor.Born in Birmingham, Herickx won a scholarship in 1914 to study under William Bloye at the Birmingham School of Art, completing his studies after World War I. He assisted Bloye on projects such as the 1933 carvings of the church of St...

, Ian Walters

Ian Walters

Ian Homer Walters was an English sculptor.Born in Solihull, Walters was educated at Yardley Grammar school and under William Bloye at the Birmingham School of Art...

and Raymond Mason. Outside the city's Bloye-dominated mainstream, the surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

sculptor Oliver O'Connor Barrett

Oliver O'Connor Barrett

Oliver O'Connor Barrett was a British sculptor, painter, graphic artist, educator, poet and composer...

was active in Birmingham between 1927 and 1942, the portrait sculptor David McFall

David McFall

David Bernard McFall was a Scottish sculptor.Born in Glasgow, McFall studied at the Junior School of Arts and Crafts in Birmingham from 1931 to 1934, and at the Birmingham School of Art from 1934 to 1939...

studied and worked in the city throughout the 1930s, while Hans Schwartz

Hans Schwartz

Hans Schwartz was a German football player who participated at the 1934 FIFA World Cup. He played club football with Victoria Hamburg.-External links:*...

produced sculpture in the city from the time of his exile from Nazi Austria

Anschluss

The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

in the 1940s until his move to London

London

in the 1960s.

Bloye's replacement at the School of Art when he retired in 1956 was John Bridgeman

John Bridgeman (sculptor)

Arthur John Bridgeman ARCA, FRBS, FRBSA was an English sculptor.-Early life:Born in Felixstowe, Suffolk and named Arthur John, he was usually called 'Bridge' by his friends and signed himself John Bridgeman...

, one of the first British sculptors to embrace fibreglass, plastics, concrete

Concrete

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...

and fondue cement

Cement

In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...

as sculptural materials and a pioneer of new sculptural forms such as play sculpture and sculpture integrated within buildings' architecture. His arrival marked a break with the city's existing tradition and the decisive ascendency of abstract sculpture

Abstract art

.

In 1972, a 550 cm (18 ft)-tall, fibreglass Statue of King Kong

King Kong statue

A statue of King Kong by Nicholas Monro was commissioned in 1972 for display in Manzoni Gardens in The Bull Ring, in the centre of Birmingham, England. It was later displayed elsewhere in Birmingham, then in Edinburgh, and is now in Penrith....

, by London pop art

Pop art

ist Nicholas Monro

Nicholas Monro

Nicholas Monro is an English pop art sculptor, print-maker and art teacher. He is notable for being one of the few British pop artists to work in sculpture and is known for his use of fibreglass....

, was erected in The Bull Ring as part of a public art initiative. After six months, though, it was sold to a second-hand car dealer who used it as an advertisement. In 1976 it was sold again, outside the city, though there are occasional calls to return it from its current home at Penrith.

The city has continued to produce notable sculptors, with recent figures including Barry Flanagan

Barry Flanagan

Barry Flanagan RA OBE was a Welsh sculptor, best known for his bronze statues of hares.-Biography:Barry Flanagan was born in Prestatyn, North Wales. He studied at Birmingham College of Art and Crafts before going on to St. Martin's School of Art in London in 1964. Flanagan graduated in 1966 and...

and David Patten

David Patten

David Patten is a former American football wide receiver. He was signed by the Albany Firebirds as a street free agent in 1996. He played college football at Western Carolina....

Photography

Victorian photographer Sir Benjamin Stone

John Benjamin Stone

Sir John Benjamin Stone , known as Benjamin, was a British Conservative politician, and noted photographer.Stone was born in Aston, Birmingham the son of a local glass manufacturer...

(1838–1914) lived and worked in Erdington, Birmingham. The Birmingham Central Library now holds the Benjamin Stone Collection. The Victorian "father of art photography", Oscar Gustave Rejlander

Oscar Gustave Rejlander

Oscar Gustave Rejlander was a pioneering Victorian art photographer and an expert in photomontage...

lived and worked at nearby Wolverhampton, and was a founder member of the Birmingham Photographic Society. The BPS later elected Henry Peach Robinson

Henry Peach Robinson

Henry Peach Robinson was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his pioneering combination printing - joining multiple negatives to form a single image, the precursor to photomontage...

as a member.

The famous photographer Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt was an influential British photographer and photojournalist known for his high-contrast images of British society and his distorted nudes and landscapes.-Career and life:...

made an extensive series of photographs for the Bournville Village Trust in Birmingham, between 1939 and 1943. These have been published as the book Homes Fit For Heroes (Dewi Lewis, 2004). The post-war changes in the cityscape, especially the clearance of older housing and the changes to the central markets, were documented by Phyllis Nicklin (1913?-1969).

In late 1979, Derek Bishton (now Consultant Editor for The Daily Telegraph), John Reardon (became Picture Editor of The Observer), and Brian Homer were three community photographers and activists in Hnadsworth, and they facilitated the 'Handsworth Self Portrait' series of self-portraits on the streets of Handsworth, Birmingham. Other notable photographers include Pogus Caesar

Pogus Caesar

Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...

, his OOM Gallery Archive holds in excess of 14,000 photographic images from 1982–present. Caesar's recent exhibitions include From Jamaica Row - Rebirth of the Bullring, Muzik Kinda Sweet and That Beautiful Thing, his work is represented in Birmingham Central Library

Birmingham Central Library

Birmingham Central Library is the main public library in Birmingham, England, and the largest non-national library in Europe. It is managed by Birmingham City Council...

.

The city is home to famed fashion photographer Garazi Gardner.

Early English typography

Birmingham had been a centre for the printing

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

of books at least as far back as the 1650s, and the area's earliest notable contribution to design was in the field of typography

Typography

, where it achieved international importance in the 18th Century and played a prominent role in the rise of English influence in a field previously dominated by German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, French

France

and Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

designers. William Caslon

William Caslon

William Caslon , also known as William Caslon I, was an English gunsmith and designer of typefaces. He was born at Cradley, Worcestershire, and in 1716 started business in London as an engraver of gun locks and barrels, and as a bookbinder's tool cutter...

– the designer of the Caslon

Caslon

Caslon refers to a number of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I , and various revivals thereof.Caslon shares the irregularity characteristic of Dutch Baroque types. It is characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and...

typefaces and the first significant English typographer – came from nearby Cradley

Cradley, Worcestershire

Cradley is a village in the "Black Country" of Dudley, near Halesowen and the banks of the river Stour. It is unofficially known locally as Colley Gate, however Colley Gate is the name of the short road in the centre of Cradley...

, and almost certainly trained as an engraver

Engraving

in Birmingham in the years before 1716. Most notable however was the Birmingham printer John Baskerville

John Baskerville

John Baskerville was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and typographer.-Life:...

, who designed the Baskerville typeface

Baskerville

Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the old style typefaces of William Caslon, and the modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot.The...

in 1754. The influence of this type design across Europe would be huge as one of the key milestones in the transition from the old-style typefaces of Fournier

Fournier

* Fournier RF-4 is a motor glider* Museo Fournier de Naipes is a playing card museumFournier is a surname:*Alain Fournier, computer graphics researcher*Alain-Fournier, French writer*Alphonse Fournier , Canadian politician...

to the modern-style type of Bodoni

Bodoni

-Cold Type versions:As it had been a standard type for many years, Bodoni was widely available in cold type. Alphatype, Autologic, Berthold, Compugraphic, Dymo, Harris, Mergenthaler, MGD Graphic Systems, and Varityper, Hell AG, Monotype, all sold the face under the name ‘’Bodoni, while Graphic...

and Didot

Didot

Didot is the name of a family of French printers, punch-cutters and publishers. Through its achievements and advancements in printing, publishing and typography, the family has lent its name to typographic measurements developed by François-Ambroise Didot and the Didot typeface developed by Firmin...

, and it is a font still widely used today in applications from the logo of New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

to the branding of the Federal Government of Canada

Federal Identity Program

The Federal Identity Program is the Canadian government's corporate identity program. The purpose of the FIP is to clearly identify each program and service of the government or the government of Canada in general. Managed by the Treasury Board Secretariat, this program, and the government's...

. Several of Baskerville's employees went on to become type designers themselves, most notably William Martin, whose Bulmer

Bulmer (typeface)

Bulmer is the name of transitional serif typeface originally designed by William Martin in 1792 for the Shakespeare Press. The types were used for printing the Boydell Shakespeare folio edition....

typeface is also still widely used.

Baskerville's design innovations extended beyond type design

Type design

Type design is the art of designing typefaces.- History :Although the technology of printing text using movable type was invented in China, and despite the esteem which calligraphy held in that civilization, the vast number of Chinese characters meant that few distinctive, complete fonts could be...

itself into typesetting

Typesetting

Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...

, graphic design

Graphic design

and page layout

Page layout

Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page.- History and development :...

, where he moved away from the then-current use of decorative symbols and embellishments, instead emphasising the use of visual proportion

Proportion (architecture)

Proportion is the relation between elements and a whole.-Architectural proportions:In architecture the whole is not just a building but the set and setting of the site. The things that make a building and its site "well shaped" include the orientation of the site and the buildings on it to the...

and white space

White space (visual arts)

In page layout, illustration and sculpture, white space is often referred to as negative space. It is that portion of a page left unmarked: the space between graphics, margins, gutters, space between columns, space between lines of type or figures and objects drawn or depicted...

to maintain aesthetic appeal. In the words of a 2001 British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

publication, "such simplicity, even minimalism, was revolutionary. It was a defining moment in bookmaking, ridding it of the irrelevant, flowery decoration of hitherto".

The birth of Industrial Design

Birmingham was at the forefront of the 18th Century emergence of industrial design

Industrial design

Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...

as a discipline. Across Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

prior to the industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

, the design and the manufacture of products generally took place together, executed manually by individual craftsmen as a single activity. By contrast, Birmingham's rise by 1791 to become "the first manufacturing town in the world" was based on the division of labour

Division of labour

Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...

, the mechanisation of production, and relentless innovation in the development of new products, materials and production techniques, with large numbers of medium-sized workshops mass-producing luxury products for the international markets defined by the town's cosmopolitan mercantile networks. These markets were dictated by fashion, which meant that design was critical to the town's economic success. Birmingham's manufactures had to equal or ideally surpass the styling and sophistication of craft-based European competitors in London

London

and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

– "for the London season the Spitalfields silk weavers produced each year their new designs, and the Birmingham toy-makers their buttons, buckles, patchboxes, snuff boxes, chatelaines, watches, watch seals ... and other jewellery".

As part of this growth of new production processes a class of specialist "art-workers" emerged in Birmingham, who engraved

Engraving

, painted

Painting

, modelled or decorated the products of the town's manufacturers. Some of these set themselves up as better-paid freelance designers, offering services to larger manufacturers drawing or modelling new products. As early as 1760 the House of Commons

House of Commons of Great Britain

The House of Commons of Great Britain was the lower house of the Parliament of Great Britain between 1707 and 1801. In 1707, as a result of the Acts of Union of that year, it replaced the House of Commons of England and the third estate of the Parliament of Scotland, as one of the most significant...

reported that Birmingham had "30 or 40 Frenchmen or Germans constantly engaged in Drawing and Designing". Taking on assistants and apprentices, some of the more successful studios and workshops developed into design schools during the 1750s, as suggested by an anonymous "Well-Wisher" who, writing in the Birmingham Gazette
Birmingham Gazette
The Birmingham Gazette, known for much of its existence as Aris's Birmingham Gazette, was a newspaper that was published and circulated in Birmingham, England from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries...

in 1754, had proposed the creation of an academy funded by subscription "for teaching some young persons, under proper restrictions, in the art of drawing and designing". The economic importance of design also meant that it was a prestigious activity within the town – the more successful designers enjoyed a social status similar to that of the larger manufacturers, and pupils at Birmingham's drawing and modelling academies included the sons of middle class professionals as well as artisans.

The Arts and Crafts Movement

If Birmingham took a leading role in the separation of design and manufacture during the industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution

, it was also prominent in the reaction against its perceived social and aesthetic consequences a century later. The Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

had deep roots in the town: its historical origins and many of its cultural roots lay with the Birmingham Set

Birmingham Set

The Birmingham Set, sometimes called the Pembroke Set or later The Brotherhood, was a group of students at the University of Oxford in England in the 1850s, most of whom were from Birmingham or had studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham...

– a group of undergraduates at Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

in the 1850s that formed around a nucleus who had studied at Birmingham's King Edward's School

King Edward's School, Birmingham

; it was in Birmingham in 1855 that the movement's founders William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

and Edward Burne-Jones

Edward Burne-Jones

had decided to abandon the priesthood and become architect and artist; its spiritual godfather A. W. N. Pugin had produced some of his earliest work in Birmingham; and three of the founder members of John Ruskin

John Ruskin

's Guild of St George

Guild of St George

The Guild of St George is charitable trust founded by John Ruskin in England in the 1870s as a vehicle to implement his ideas about how society should be re-organised. Its members, who are called Companions, were originally required to give a tithe of their income to the Guild...

were Birmingham men.

However it was the appointment of Edward R. Taylor

Edward R. Taylor

to the headmastership of the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

in 1877 that was to lead to the ideology and aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts Movement becoming the dominant feature in Birmingham's visual culture. Taylor and the school's chairman John Henry Chamberlain

John Henry Chamberlain

John Henry Chamberlain , generally known professionally as J H Chamberlain, was a nineteenth century English architect....

persuaded William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

to accept the appointment as the school's President for two years from 1878 – the start of a 20 year relationship between Morris and the school that saw him act as lecturer and examiner, and as a commissioner of work from the school's students. In 1881 Birmingham became the first art school to incorporate Morris's ideas into its teaching introducing the then-revolutionary principle of teaching techniques of design and manufacture together. Instead of just drawing their designs on paper, Birmingham students executed them as finished products in the materials for which they were intended. In 1883 the school broke completely from the control of the national system of art education, with its rigidly prescribed systems of theoretical instruction controlled from South Kensington

South Kensington

South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....

, and became the first British art school to establish itself fully under local municipal control.

The results of this revolution in art education were far-reaching. Over the course of the 1880s and 1890s the Birmingham School of Art became the focus of a generation of distinguished designers, all of whom had studied there and most of whom went on to teach there, who became known as the Birmingham Group, including the stained glass

Stained glass

designers Henry Payne

Henry Payne (artist)

, Sidney Meteyard

Sidney Meteyard

, Florence Camm and Bernard Sleigh

Bernard Sleigh

; the wood engravers and book illustrators E. H. New and Charles March Gere

Charles March Gere

Charles March Gere, RA, RWS was an English painter, illustrator of books, and stained glass and embroidery designer associated with the Arts and Crafts movement....

; the jewellers and metalworkers Arthur Dixon, Arthur Gaskin

Arthur Gaskin

Arthur Joseph Gaskin RBSA was an English illustrator, painter, teacher and designer of jewellery and enamelwork....

and Georgie Gaskin

Georgie Gaskin

Georgina Evelyn Cave Gaskin , known as Georgie Gaskin, was an English jewellery and metalwork designer....

; and the furniture

Furniture

designers Ernest Barnsley and Sidney Barnsley. The influence of the school's teaching also permeated beyond this inner circle, and important work in an Arts and Crafts style was also produced by organisations such as the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft, the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts, the Kynoch Press and the Ruskin Pottery

Ruskin Pottery

The Ruskin Pottery was an English pottery studio founded in 1898 by Edward R. Taylor, the first Principal of Birmingham School of Art, to be run by his son, William Howson Taylor, formerly a student there. It was named after the artist, writer and social thinker John Ruskin, as the Taylors agreed...

; and commercial firms such as the silversmiths A. E. Jones, the stained glass workshops of T. W. Camm and Co. and the metalworkers Henry Hope and Son.

The thinking of the Arts and Crafts Movement chimed perfectly with the Civic Gospel

Civic Gospel

ideology of Birmingham's non-conformist and Radical

Radicalism (historical)

The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

Liberal

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

political elite. While promoting enlightened municipal activism, the Civic Gospel also carried an aesthetic dimension: one of its leaders, H. W. Crosskey, would "excite his audience by dwelling on the glories of Florence and the cities of Italy in the Middle Ages and suggest that Birmingham too might become the home of a noble literature and art" As a result Birmingham's artists and craftsmen would benefit from extensive patronage, as the Arts and Crafts style became the semi-official taste of Birmingham's governing elite.

The work of the artist-craftsmen of Birmingham, which reached a peak of quality around 1900, was both distinctive and original. It was not only marked by the simplicity of technique that was characteristic of the wider Arts and Crafts Movement, but also openly expressed this simplicity in the deliberate primitivism and innocence of its style – "their success as designers lay in what they left off". It was this sense of extreme understatement and almost childlike innocence that contrasted with the sophisticated and symbolically-charged Celtic mysticism of the Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...

– the other distinctive local Arts and Crafts tradition of the time – and lay behind its considerable contemporary reputation and its widespread influence on later modernism

Modernism

Early modernism

The strength of the Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

within Birmingham formed one of the precursors of early European modernism

Modernism

. Edward R. Taylor

Edward R. Taylor

's educational developments in Birmingham in the 1880s were a direct influence on William Lethaby

William Lethaby

William Richard Lethaby was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of conservation and art education.-Early life:Lethaby was born in Barnstaple, Devon, the son of...

's innovations at London

London

's Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1896, which in turn provided the model for the establishment of the Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

by Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....

in 1919. The Dutch architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, furniture

Furniture

designer and De Stijl
De Stijl
De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...

group founder Robert van 't Hoff

Robert van 't Hoff

Robert van 't Hoff , born Robbert van 't Hoff, was a Dutch architect and furniture designer. His Villa Henny, designed in 1914, was one of the earliest modernist houses and one of the first to be built out of reinforced concrete...

studied at the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

from 1906 to 1911 and worked for Birmingham architect Herbert Tudor Buckland

Herbert Tudor Buckland

Herbert Tudor Buckland was a British architect, best known for his seminal Arts and Crafts houses , the Elan Valley model village, educational buildings such as the campus of the Royal Hospital School in Suffolk and St Hugh's College in Oxford.-Biography:Buckland was born in...

, later also coming under the influence of the Birmingham-born cubist and futurist

Futurism

David Bomberg

.

During the 1930s Harry Weedon

Harry Weedon

– whose background lay in designing upmarket Arts and Crafts houses in suburbs such as Four Oaks – oversaw the development of the art deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

branding of the Odeon Cinemas

Odeon Cinemas

Odeon Cinemas is a British chain of cinemas, one of the largest in Europe. It is owned by Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group whose ultimate parent is Terra Firma Capital Partners.-History:Odeon Cinemas was created in 1928 by Oscar Deutsch...

for Balsall Heath

Balsall Heath

Balsall Heath is a working class, inner-city area of Birmingham, England. It is home to a diverse cultural mix of people and the location of the Balti Triangle.-History:...

-born Oscar Deutsch

Oscar Deutsch

Oscar Deutsch was the founder of the Odeon Cinemas chain in the United Kingdom.-Life and career:Deutsch was born in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, England, the son of Leopold Deutsch, a successful Hungarian Jewish scrap metal merchant. After attending King Edward VI Five Ways, he opened his first...

; combining graphics

Graphics

Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings,or...

, typography

Typography

and architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

to create one of the first examples of unashamedly modernist design to successfully enter mainstream English culture.

Post-war design

Birmingham's designers diversified into new industries in the late twentieth century. Challenged to "bring art to an artless industry", A. H. Woodfull

A. H. Woodfull

Albert Henry "Woody" Woodfull was an English product designer. Laying down many of the ground rules of industrial design in plastics while heading British Industrial Plastics' Product Design Unit, his work had international influence.Woodfull was born in Birmingham and trained as a silversmith at...

laid down many of the ground rules of industrial design

Industrial design

in plastics during the early post-war era, producing classic tableware including the Beetleware, Gaydon and Melaware ranges, while Robert Welch

Robert Welch (silversmith)

Robert Radford Welch MBE, RDI was an English designer and silversmith. His style helped define British modernism....

's designs for tableware, clocks, candlesticks and other domestic items "helped to define contemporary style" in the 1960s. The Bauhaus

Bauhaus

-trained Naum Slutzky

Naum Slutzky

Naum Slutzky was a Goldsmith, Industrial designer and master craftsman of Weimarer Bauhaus...

fled to Birmingham from Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

in 1933, working with local lighting design firms and teaching product design

Product design

-Introduction:Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. It is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.Product designers conceptualize and...

at the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

from 1957 to 1964.

During the post-war era Birmingham was particularly influential within automotive design

Automotive design

Automotive design is the profession involved in the development of the appearance, and to some extent the ergonomics, of motor vehicles or more specifically road vehicles. This most commonly refers to automobiles but also refers to motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans...

, the field associated with the city's dominant post-war industry. Dick Burzi, who had fled to Birmingham from Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's Italy

Italy

in the 1920s, transformed the conservative design culture of the Longbridge

Longbridge

Longbridge is an area of Birmingham, England. For local government purposes it is a ward within the district of Northfield.Since 1905, the area has been dominated by the Longbridge plant, which produced Austin, Nash Metropolitan, Morris, British Leyland, and most recently MG Rover cars...

-based Austin Motor Company

Austin Motor Company

The Austin Motor Company was a British manufacturer of automobiles. The company was founded in 1905 and merged in 1952 into the British Motor Corporation Ltd. The marque Austin was used until 1987...

in the 1940s and 1950s, designing the "astonishingly extravagant" Austin Atlantic

Austin Atlantic

The Austin A90 Atlantic was a British car produced by the Austin Motor Company, launched initially as a sporting four seat convertible. It made its début at the 1948 Earls Court Motor Show in London, with production models built between spring 1949 and late 1950...

in 1948 and the "delightfully minimal" Austin A30

Austin A30

The A30 was a compact car produced by Austin Motor Company in the 1950s. Introduced in 1951 as the "New Austin Seven", it was Austin's answer to the Morris Minor...

in 1951. David Bache

David Bache

David Ernest Bache was a British car designer. For much of his career he worked with Rover.-Early life:Bache was born in Worcestershire, the son of Aston Villa and England footballer Joe Bache...

served an apprenticeship under Burzi at Longbridge before studying at the University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

and the Birmingham School of Art

Birmingham School of Art

, and moving in 1954 to the Rover Company in Solihull

Solihull

Solihull is a town in the West Midlands of England with a population of 94,753. It is a part of the West Midlands conurbation and is located 9 miles southeast of Birmingham city centre...

, where he designed the 1963 Rover P6

Rover P6

The first P6 used a 2.0 L engine designed specifically for the P6. Although it was announced towards the end of 1963, the car had been in "pilot production" since the beginning of the year, therefore deliveries were able to begin immediately. Original output was in the order of . At the...

, in design terms "perhaps the most sophisticated British production car ever". Patrick Le Quement

Patrick le Quément

Patrick G. M. Le Quément is a retired French car designer, formerly chief designer of Renault.Born in France but brought up in the United Kingdom, Le Quément holds a BA Hons...

, who was brought up in the city and trained at the Birmingham School of Art in the 1960s, was the stylist for the revolutionary and controversial design of the Ford Sierra

Ford Sierra

The Ford Sierra is a large family car that was built by Ford Europe from 1982 until 1993. It was designed by Uwe Bahnsen, Robert Lutz and Patrick le Quément. The code used during development was "Project Toni"....

of 1982, before leading the resurgence of design at Renault

Renault

Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

in the 1990s as Head of Design, where his work on models such as the Avantime

Renault Avantime

The Renault Avantime is a grand-touring coupé combining features of a 2+2 coupé and an MPV — marketed by the French manufacturer Renault, designed and manufactured by Matra, between 2001 and 2003...

and the Vel Satis

Renault Vel Satis

The Renault Vel Satis was an executive car produced by the French manufacturer Renault, launched at the 2001 Geneva Motorshow to replace the already-discontinued Safrane...

was acclaimed for its "extraordinary aesthetics, a combination of explicit geometry, deliberate assymetry and imbalance, and a refusal to conform".

By far the most notable piece of automotive design to emerge from the city however was the Mini

Mini

The Mini is a small car that was made by the British Motor Corporation and its successors from 1959 until 2000. The original is considered a British icon of the 1960s, and its space-saving front-wheel-drive layout influenced a generation of car-makers...

, which was the best-selling car in Europe during the 1960s and remained in production for over 40 years. Designed by Alec Issigonis

Alec Issigonis

in 1957, the Mini became "the design icon of a generation". Attracting celebrity owners from all four Beatles to Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen

Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

to Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...

, its influence extended far beyond automotive design as it come to symbolise Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

in the Swinging Sixties

1960s

The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...

Current art galleries

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts is housed at the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...

and although only a small gallery it was declared 'Gallery of the Year' by the Good Britain Guide 2004.
Birmingham has one of the largest collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world at The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England.Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee...

.
The Ikon Gallery
Ikon Gallery
The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.Ikon was set up to...

is housed in a neo-gothic former school in Brindleyplace
Brindleyplace
Brindleyplace is a large mixed-use canalside development, in the Westside district of Birmingham, England. It is often written erroneously as Brindley Place, the name of the street around which it is built...

and showcases modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

. Number 9 The Gallery is close by.
The Halcyon Gallery
Halcyon Gallery
Halcyon Gallery has two art galleries in the United Kingdom. They are situated on New Bond Street and Bruton Street in Mayfair. In February 2008, Halcyon Gallery opened a five-storey contemporary gallery at 24 Bruton Street with a new exhibition by sculptor Lorenzo Quinn.In the summer of 2008,...

is located inside the International Convention Centre
International Convention Centre, Birmingham
The International Convention Centre is a major conference venue in central Birmingham, England. The centre includes Symphony Hall and it faces Centenary Square. The building has another entrance leading to the canals of Birmingham. The Convention Quarter area, which includes Brindleyplace, is...

. It opened with a major retrospective of Robert Lenkiewicz
Robert Lenkiewicz
Robert Oscar Lenkiewicz was one of the South West England's most celebrated artists of modern times. Perennially unfashionable in high art circles, his work was nevertheless popular with the public...

, and has continued with exhibitions by artists as diverse as Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris, CBE, AM is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, painter and television personality.Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the...

and L. S. Lowry
L. S. Lowry
Laurence Stephen Lowry was an English artist born in Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for over 40 years at 117 Station Road , opposite St...

.
The Waterhall gallery in the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England.Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee...

displays a regular showcase of modern art which includes local artists and others sometimes from the city's own extensive collection.
Harborne Gallery, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
Royal Birmingham Society of Artists
The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an art gallery based in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, England. it is both a registered charity. and a registered company The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists or RBSA is a learned society of artists and an...

and the 'New Gallery' in St Paul's square also shows local artists.
The old Bird's Custard Factory
Custard Factory
The Custard Factory is an arts and media production centre in Birmingham, England .Located on the redeveloped site of the Bird's Custard factory in the industrial district of Digbeth, it is home to a community of businesses, primarily with an artistic and media slant, but also including...

is now one of the largest media and arts villages in Europe, with occasional exhibitions and modern sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

and water features.
OOM Gallery online collaborates with the private, public and voluntary sector by developing and producing a diverse range of multimedia art projects.
The mac
Mac (Birmingham)
mac is a non-profit arts centre situated in Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. It was established in 1962 and is registered as an educational charity which host plays, concerts and films shows; and holds art exhibitions, music classes, and workshops for all ages.The centre re-opened...

hosts theatre performances, concerts, literature and poetry showcases, courses, film screenings and small art exhibitions.
The Drum Arts Centre
Drum Arts Centre
The Drum is an arts centre in the Newtown area of Aston, in Birmingham, England, established as the United Kingdom's national centre for Black British and British Asian arts. Activities include music, drama, spoken word, visual arts, comedy and dance....

features works of African, Asian and Caribbean contemporary artists.
Selly Oak
Selly Oak
Selly Oak is a residential suburban district in south-west Birmingham, England. The suburb is bordered by Bournbrook and Selly Park to the north-east, Edgbaston and Harborne to the north, Weoley Castle and Weoley Hill to the west, and Bournville to the south...

ball park is home to many graffiti murals that change on a regular basis. Other graffiti art can be seen across the city on disused buildings and canal towpaths as well as subways.

There are a variety of other small and private galleries in the city.

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