BRIT ART OF THE SIXTIES

About

'Swinging London' was seen as the epicentre of everything trendy, progressive and inspirational during the 1960s - mini skirts, mini cars, Mary Quant, the King's Road, Carnaby Street, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and an explosion of colour and youth culture made for heady times, and the art of the period was no less radical, showing an extraordinary level of innovation and diversity.

It is against this backdrop that Mark Barrow Fine Art has brought together a selection of works by the leading artists of the decade in a survey show that takes in Pop Art, Op Art and hard-edge geometric abstraction to offer a new perspective on the period.

Major works by artists such as Joe Tilson, Richard Smith, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips, who all burst from the Royal College of Art in the early 1960s with an anarchic asthetic that challenged the very core of what made 'art', are presented alongside fellow painters John Hoyland, Harold Cohen and Bernard Cohen, who were exploring a new form of organic abstraction; Bridget Riley, Peter Sedgley, Michael Kidner and Barry Martin, whose mind bending kinetic, or Op-Art, took hard-edge abstraction to new heights by playing with the sensory perception of the viewer; and the radical sculptors Clive Barker and Nicolas Munro, whose use of popular imagery epitamised what we all now know as Pop Art.

Highlights include 'Swan', an early Pop Art painting by Derek Boshier and the only remaining work of the period still in the artists' collection; a museum quality John Hoyland from a private collection in Europe; seminal examples of both Harold and Bernard Cohen, two very important painters who represented Great Britain at the Venice Bienalle as well as a host of other major international exhibitions throughout the 1960s and who could be seen as the Chapman brothers of their day for the radical direction of their work; a significant Jeremy Moon grid painting from the same series recently shown at the Tate; and a major Joe Tilson diptych representing Russian cosmonaut and hero Yuri Gagarin. As well as at least one major example of each of the 22 artists featured in the exhibition, there will also be a selection of smaller works and works on paper, starting from as little as £1000, so no one need feel priced out of acquiring a unique piece of British sixties history. Prices range from £1000 - over £100,000.

Full list of artists
Derek Boshier, Richard Smith, Nicolas Munro, Joe Tilson, John Hoyland, Clive Barker, Peter Phillips, Jeremy Moon, Harold Cohen, Bernard Cohen, Antony Donaldson, Michael Tyzack, David Leverett, Michael Kidner, Bridget Riley, Peter Sedgley, Marx Vaux, Garth Evans, Justin Knowles, Derek Hirst, Barry Martin and Gerald Laing