ART IN EAST SUSSEX

COMRADES IN ART : ARTISTS AGAINST FASCISM
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, 7th May 2026 to18th October 2026

WALTER SICKERT : WORKING NOTES
Charleston in Lewes, 2nd May 2026 to11th October 2026

GLADYS HYNES : RADICAL LIVES
Charleston in Lewes, 2nd May 2026 to 11th October 2026

INTO THE BLUE
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2nd May 2026 to 20th September 2026

Reviewed by Jim Burns

Ennui - Walter Sickert

 The Artists International Association (AIA) was formed in 1933, its aim being to “organise visual artists – painters, sculptors and designers – so as to enable them to express their commitment to social responsibility in art and to support radical, political ideas directly in terms of their practice as artists”. (Robert Radford, Art for a Purpose, Winchester School of Art Press, 1987).  Andy Friend is more enthusiastic and provocative when he refers to “one of the boldest and most imaginative artistic developments in England during the twentieth century”. (Andy Friend, Comrades in Art: Artists Against Fascism 1933-1943, Thames & Hudson, 2025). It’s Friend’s book that is the inspiration for the splendid exhibition at the Towner which does a wonderful job of focusing attention on a group of artists who have been largely and unfairly forgotten in recent years. The political climate that developed, as wartime friendship with Russia waned and the Cold War got under way, resulted in a split in the organisation in 1953, which had the effect of eliminating the political aspects of its programme.

I may be in danger of giving the impression that all the art produced by members of AIA was solidly political.  It was mostly certainly based in the social realist camp and concerned to catch sight of life on the streets, in the home, and anywhere else that represented the ordinary and everyday. Cliff Rowe’s “The Fried Fish Shop”, with its cast of customers, counter staff and crisply-dressed waitresses, is a typical example of an artist who, although politically committed, didn’t think it was always necessary to wave flags or paint slogans to make a point. It emphasises the commonplace to give it a sense of perhaps not importance but definitely of interest. This is where people go, where they mix and fraternise. They may sit at separate tables, but they’re not alone.

And the domestic was seen as a suitable subject for painting, as in Margaret Fitton’s “Ironing and Airing” and “Rhubarb Pie”. There may be an ironic element in both. In another Fitton canvas, “Man in a Wicker Chair”, he’s relaxing while he smokes his pipe and reads a book, whereas the women in the other paintings are busy.

Despite the fact that artists like John Piper (abstraction) and John Tunnard (surrealism) can be seen in the exhibition, it’s quite obvious that the political comes to the fore in many of the items on display. You couldn’t get more direct than Cliff Rowe’s “The Struggle Between the Unemployed and the Police Forces”, a panoramic view of a pitched battle between foot and mounted police and a range of men and women, some wounded, others aiming blows at the nearest policeman or attempting to pull out some railings to use as weapons.  It’s a violent scene that is depicted, and it ought to be remembered that the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) was formed in the 1930s because of the level of violence used by police against the unemployed and other demonstrators. It was known that some policemen were members of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

Rowe’s political commitment can be seen in a poster he designed for the 1935 Royal Jubilee, its stark message reading “25 years of War Hunger Unemployment”, and its portrayal of a crowned skull. It inevitably came to the attention of the police, as did Rowe himself.  He had spent eighteen months in Russia, working for the Foreign Workers Publishing House, and had been impressed by the way that art was used to promote the common good. He was one of the founders of AIA, along with Pearl Binder, James Boswell, and several others.

Boswell, a member of the Communist Party, was a satirist whose work was sometimes compared to that of the Weimar artists George Grosz and Otto Dix. He contributed drawings to Left Review and the Daily Worker. His “Surrealist Exhibition London 1936”, with its bourgeois viewers clearly shocked or baffled by what they’re gaping at, is amusing. And his “Church, Press and Army” needs little explanation in its attack on three fairly obvious targets.  Perhaps more pointed is “He hath made for us a pathway,” which uses a line from Kipling to comment on British imperialism, and shows what Friend describes as “three human pillars of the Empire”.

Pearl Binder was the daughter of a Jewish tailor in Salford. She had worked in a factory after leaving school, but also attended evening classes at Manchester School of Art. She moved to London when she was twenty-one, spent time in Paris, and by 1933 “had gained a reputation as a distinctive lithographic book illustrator”. She visited Russia, where an exhibition of some of her work “was mounted in Moscow at the Museum of New Western Art”. According to Friend, when she returned to London she reported enthusiastically on how well artists were treated in Russia. Her lithograph, “Down the Mine, South Wales”, captures the cramped nature of that kind of work, and her lithographs of a “Jewish Bookshop” and a “Jewish Restaurant”, both picture a world that has long disappeared. There’s also her striking “The Bell Foundry”.

I’ve been very selective in what I’ve chosen to write about, and could easily have found something to say about almost every item on the walls of this exhibition. And that without even mentioning the additional material – books, prints, magazines - in display cases. There are what I think of as quiet paintings, such as Nan Youngman’s landscape, “Gleaning at Godmanchester”, Percy Horton’s “The Invalid” (an elderly lady with a look of resignation on her face), and Graham Bell’s “The Café”, which I’ve known for years. It amuses me, with its glum-looking lady behind the counter, its rock cakes in a glass case and, no doubt, cups of weak tea, and seems very English. A painting of a Parisian café of the period would surely have been more adventurous.

There isn’t a catalogue as such for this exhibition, but Andy Friend’s large book works as one in many ways, and packs in a lot of additional information. He relates what AIA members were doing to some similar developments in the United States, though nothing comparable to Roosevelt’ s New Deal programme happened in Britain. Artists in America were employed painting murals in government buildings, post offices, and other locations. (See my review of New Deal Art in Northern Review of Books, April, 2026).

It isn’t far from Eastbourne to Lewes  where there are two excellent exhibitions at Charleston in Lewes. Walter Sickert : Working Notes brings together a wide range of drawings and prints, together with some paintings, the latter including a version of what is often seen as one of his better-known canvases, “Ennui”, over which it’s still possible to disagree about what it is saying. Is the man satisfied with his situation, having his beer and baccy handy and not too bothered about how the woman behind him feels? But Sickert did much more than this painting. He produced scenes of music halls in the days when the galleries were crowded with working-class men and women and Marie Lloyd sang “The boy I love is up in the gallery/The boy I love is looking down at me” direct to them, knowing where her real audience was.  And he sketched churches and other buildings in Dieppe and elsewhere.

Yes, some of what is in the exhibition can be seen as fragmentary and little more than “working notes”, the kind that any artist makes. But the fact that they’re by Sickert and can be incorporated into his work generally gives them added relevance. Sickert didn’t think of drawings and prints as secondary to paintings, but rather “central to ways of thinking through modern experience”. He didn’t stand still and influenced other artists like those in the Camden Town Group and, I think it’s true to say, some of the painters in the Comrades in Art exhibition. He showed how “interior spaces and urban scenes” were important.

I’m not going to pretend that I was familiar with the work of Gladys Hynes  before I saw her work in the exhibition under review. I wasn’t, but I’m glad I’ve now had the opportunity to “discover” an obviously skilled artist with a wide range of interests. And a nice sense of humour. Her 1937 painting, “The Private View”, is a satirical look at what appears to be a gathering of affected middle-class types who, with only one or two exceptions, seem to be more inclined to posturing and preening than in looking at the paintings.  It’s a world away from the sort of audience likely to have been seen at a show of AIA art. I was also impressed by her 1912 “In the Park”, which made me think of the Scottish Colourists, and the 1940 anti-war “A Penny for the Guy”, a statement relating to Hynes’s pacifist leanings.  

What is particularly useful is that Hynes’ paintings, book covers, and designs, are seen in context, with work by some of her contemporaries. Harold Knight’s “Girl Combing Hair” is actually a painting of Hynes. She knew Knight and his wife, Laura Knight, from time spent in Cornwall, where she also met Christopher Wood and Dod Proctor.  Hynes had studied with Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth Forbes at their school in Newlyn. She knew the Vorticist painter William Roberts, and several women artists, Annie Walke, Mary Adshead, and Helen Blair, whose surrealist-like “Scenes from the Life of Job” is in the exhibition. She knew Cedric Morris, and his   colourful painting of the Café de la Rotonde in Paris stands out. Beyond art, she was friendly with Ezra Pound, and campaigned for his release after he was accused of treason, judged insane, and committed to an asylum.  And being from Irish Catholic stock she supported the Irish fight for freedom from English rule, though she is said to have been opposed to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty  and sympathised with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Civil War. 

And then to Brighton where a small exhibition, Into the Blue, uses “drawings, prints and paintings” from Brighton and Hove Museums’ collections to demonstrate “how we are surrounded by blue”, although in a variety of shades. A colour chart on one wall illustrates how many there are. One of the joys of visiting galleries I don’t often get to is having an opportunity to see paintings I’d miss otherwise. Walking through the main entrance room in Brighton I noted works by Laura Knight, Eileen Agar, Edward Wadsworth, and Mark Gertler, to mention just a few names.

A final word. When I enquired I was told that the Comrades in Arms exhibition is not going to any other galleries after it closes in Eastbourne. It’s a great pity because it deserves a wider showing, and it’s unlikely that the exhibits will be brought together again in the near future. If you can get to Eastbourne, do so. You can also see the Towner’s fine collection of Eric Ravilious’s watercolours.