The City Art Centre has acquired a "major new painting" through the Art Fund and Barns-Graham Charitable Trust by the late Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912 – 2004).
The art gallery will be exhibiting the newly acquired Untitled – Firth of Forth Series, an abstract canvas inspired by the experience of crossing the Forth Rail Bridge, in the upcoming exhibition A – Z: An Alphabetical Tour of Scottish Art.
The exhibition opens in a newly refurbished gallery space on 26 April.
The City Art Centre's collection includes Scottish two other artworks by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: the oil painting Rocks, St Mary’s, Scilly Isles (1953), and the smaller gouache Seaweed and Stone, Skull (1988).
Until now, the City Art Centre collection has not included any examples of work from Barns-Graham’s late period (mid 1990s onwards), which is often considered one of the strongest and most experimental stages in her career. The acquisition of Untitled – Firth of Forth Series which was painted while the artist was in her late 80s, allows the City Art Centre to better represent this Scottish artist.
A – Z: An Alphabetical Tour of Scottish Art is the first exhibition to be staged in the City Art Centre’s newly refurbished lower ground floor gallery.
Joanne Orr, chief executive officer of Museums Galleries Scotland, said:
"The redeveloped space will feature a new home for The Scottish Art Collection, which is comprised of historic and contemporary artists and consists of around 3,500 works of Scottish art in the form of paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture and tapestries. The Collection is a Recognised Collection of National Significance to Scotland.”
The new gallery space will feature a changing programme from the permanent Scottish Art Collection starting with "A – Z: An Alphabetical Tour of Scottish Art".
Painters, sculptors, photographers and printmakers from the 17th century to the present day will all be featured, representing the key movements that have shaped Scotland’s artistic identity.
About Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Born in 1912, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham trained at Edinburgh College of Art, before relocating to Cornwall in 1940. She became a long-standing member of the St Ives school, working alongside artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron.
In 1960 she inherited a house near St Andrews, and began dividing her time more evenly between her native Scotland and her home in St Ives. Her artistic career was a life-long passion – she continued working until her death in 2004, aged 91.