Going Modern: British Art, 1900–1960

This spring, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) presents Going Modern: British Art, 1900–1960, an exhibition tracing how artists in Britain negotiated the challenges and opportunities of modernism in a rapidly changing world. Drawn from the museum’s renowned collection, the exhibition features more than seventy paintings and sculptures by some of the most compelling figures of twentieth-century British art, including Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach. 

“Going Modern demonstrates the richness and complexity of Britain’s engagement with modernism,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, YCBA. “The exhibition reveals how artists working within a deeply rooted national tradition responded to the changing world around them, developing innovative forms of expression that continue to shape our understanding of modern art today.”

The first half of the twentieth century in Britain was marked by dramatic transformation: new technologies, shifting social and political orders, and the upheavals of two World Wars. For artists, these developments posed a vital question: how could a nation so deeply rooted in tradition forge its own modern identity? “Going modern and being British,” as the painter Paul Nash observed, was never straightforward.

“Through the lens of the YCBA collection, Going Modern illuminates how British artists met this challenge with imagination and diversity of approach,” said exhibition curator Lucinda Lax, Interim Head of the Curatorial Division and Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the YCBA. “Together, they created a dynamic and multifaceted modernism—one that encompassed the abstract and the figurative, the geometric and the expressive, and ultimately brought them together in increasingly powerful ways that continue to resonate and inspire today.”

Highlights of the exhibition include early twentieth-century paintings by Walter Sickert and members of the Camden Town Group, which capture the modern city’s atmosphere and rhythms; works by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant that exemplify the Bloomsbury Group’s experimental spirit; and Ben Nicholson’s elegant abstractions, which helped define a distinctly British modernist aesthetic. The groundbreaking sculptures of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth stand alongside powerful figurative paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach, whose intense psychological visions marked a new era in postwar art. Other featured artists—among them Paul Nash, Prunella Clough, Keith Vaughan, and William Turnbull—demonstrate the extraordinary range of styles that characterized Britain’s artistic identity in the first half of the twentieth century.

Going Modern: British Art, 1900–1960 is organized by the Yale Center for British Art and curated by Lucinda Lax, Interim Head of the Curatorial Division and Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, with Rachel Stratton, independent curator and former Postdoctoral Research Associate at the YCBA.

IMAGES

C. R. W. Nevinson, The Wave, 1917, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.

Ben Nicholson, May 1955 (Gwithian), 1955, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
© Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved, DACS, London / ARS, NY 2025. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Barbara Hepworth, Biolith, 1948–49, Yale Center for
British Art, gift of Virginia Vogel Mattern in memory of her husband, W. Gray Mattern, Yale BA 1946. Barbara Hepworth © Bowness. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Lucian Freud, Girl in a Dark Dress, 1951, oil on canvas, anonymous loan. Lucian Freud Archive © Bridgeman Images. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Edward Wadsworth, Sea-verge, 1943, tempera on board, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.

Walter Sickert, La Giuseppina, 1903 to 1904, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Roger Fry, La Ciotat, ca. 1915, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, gift of Lois Severini and Enrique Foster Gittes, Yale BA 1961.

Paul Nash, Mineral Objects, 1935, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Vanessa Bell, Self-Portrait, ca. 1915, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London.
Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Francis Bacon, Study of a Head, 1952, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, gift of Beekman C. and Margaret H. Cannon. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2025. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Henry Moore, Helmet Head No. 3, 1960, bronze,

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
© The Henry Moore Foundation. All rights reserved, DACS 2025 / www.henry-moore.org. Image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art.

Harold Gilman, Stanislawa de Karlowska, ca. 1913, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.å