The Penwith Society of Arts is an art group formed in St Ives

St Ives, Cornwall

St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial...

, Cornwall

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...

, UK in early 1949 by abstract art

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...

ists who broke away from the more conservative St Ives Society of Artists. It was originally led by Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

 and Ben Nicholson

Ben Nicholson

Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...

, and included members of the Crypt Group of the St Ives Society, including Peter Lanyon

Peter Lanyon

Peter Lanyon was a Cornish painter of landscapes leaning heavily towards abstraction. He also made constructions, pottery and collage....

. Other early members included Leonard Fuller, John Wells

John Wells (artist)

John Wells was an artist and maker of relief constructions, associated with the St Ives group.He was born in London, and trained as a doctor at University College Hospital. He learned to paint at evening classes at St Martin’s School of Art. From 1936 to 1945, he worked as a General Practitioner...

, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE was one of the foremost British abstract artists, a member of the influential Penwith Society of Arts.-Life:...

, Denis Mitchell, and the printer Guido Morris

Latin Press

The Latin Press was a small letterpress printing business , run by Douglas "Guido" Morris . He became interested in printing in his twenties and first experimented with type and a home-made press in Oxford in 1934...

. 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....

 was the first president.

The group bought fishing lofts along Porthmeor beach to use as artists' studios.

External links

• Penwith Society of Arts from the glossary at the Tate Gallery, St Ives
• Penwith Society of Arts from the Newlyn fish industry forum
• artcornwall.org on-line journal for art and artists in St Ives and Cornwall