Exhibition: Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking

This Summer, Dulwich Picture Gallery will shine a spotlight on a brief but intense period of dynamic printmaking during the interwar period, with the first major show of work by artists from the Grosvenor School of Modern Art.

Celebrating 90 years since the inaugural exhibition on British linocuts at the Redfern Gallery in London, Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking will bring together 120 prints, drawings and posters to highlight a radical movement that incorporated metropolitan and rural life, men and women, as well as British and international students. It will reveal the unified commitment by the artists of the Grosvenor School to champion and progress the medium of linocut printmaking with key works by the influential teacher and artist, Claude Flight, and nine of his leading students including Cyril Power, Sybil Andrews, Lill Tschudi, William Greengrass and Leonard Beaumont. A number of loans will be displayed publicly for the first time and several international loans will receive their first major UK showing, including prints by the Australian students Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme.

Founded by the Scottish wood engraver Iain Macnab in Pimlico, London in 1925, the Grosvenor School became a leading force in the production of modern printmaking between the wars. The group became renowned for their iconic, vibrant prints that championed the energy of contemporary life - translating ordinary, everyday scenes into modernist compositions. Arranged thematically, the exhibition will highlight key series of works and focus on the components that made up their energetic and rhythmic visual imagery. From commuter experiences of public transport, to mass spectatorship at sporting events and scenes of working life, the artists sought subjects that would be instantly recognisable and reflect Flight’s ideas that linocuts should be ‘an art of the people for their homes’.