Pop art: Photos from new exhibition at National Museum Wales
- Published
A new Pop Art exhibition called Pop and Abstract has opened at the National Museum Cardiff, featuring many important artists' works from its modern art collections. The exhibition which runs to 1 September, shows how pop and abstract artist of the later 20th and 21st Centuries developed thematically from early masters like Paul Cezanne.
The museum said the exhibition, which is supported by the Colwinston Charitable Trust, highlights the way the "swinging sixties transformed British art in the post war period". It is said British artists began to make work that was bold, confident and signalled a decisive break with the past.
Among those exhibited is Alan Davie, one of the first British artists to be inspired by American Abstract Expressionism. He developed an interest in spontaneous, gestural painting often employing symbols and motifs that appeared to be drawn from the unconscious.
The exhibition in the new galleries opened in 2012 explores the way pop and abstraction was interpreted by artists based in Wales and remains relevant and influential to today's artists. Angel and People by Mail Morris was painted with the canvas attached to a board placed horizontally on the floor. The subject of the painting is colour
Artists with links to Wales are also prominent. Allen Jones has compared this large, ambitious painting to a London traffic jam, where "everyone is moving in one direction but somehow or other it all shunts backwards and forwards because they are all going at different speeds and moving at different times".
Nicholas Thornton, head of contemporary and modern art, said many of the big, bold and colourful works are being seen for the first time and the inclusion of new works - by Holley Davy and Wales' Venice Biennale 2011 entrant Tim Davies - underlines the commitment to the contemporary and the museum's ambition to connect with audience in new ways.
Pioneer of British pop art Peter Blake who takes inspiration from popular culture and everyday life is also featured. This is a ‘portrait’ of a Japanese-American wrestler called Kamikaze . The model fighter plane and photograph make reference to the Kamikaze suicide missions carried out by Japanese pilots in the Second World War.