Exhibition Archive

Art Made Modern: Roger Frys Vision of Art

15 October 1999 - 23 January 2000

Duncan Grant, Design for Tray (?): Three Dancers, Courtauld Gallery, Courtauld Institute of Art

Roger Fry (1866-1934) introduced a radically new vision of art to Britain. He was an artist. designer, critic and art historian, famous for bringing Post-Impressionist painting to Britain in exhibitions which astonished, inspired and shocked those who saw them.

This exhibition explored the radical nature of his ideas, his passion for modern art and the explosive impact he had on the artistic life of this country. It gathered together works which excited him from the Italian Renaissance to Africa, from China to the Post-Impressionists.

African Ancestral Guardian Figure (Kota), Courtauld Gallery, Courtauld Institute of Art

It included major loans from public and private collections in Britain, France and the USA, including works by Matisse, Cézanne, Seurat, Picasso, Uccello, El Greco, Rembrandt, Chardin and Rubens, as well as African, Scythian and Chinese artefacts from Frys own collection, never before shown in public.

As a designer and thinker, Fry was central to the Omega Workshop and the exhibition included a rich display of its designs, furniture, textiles and ceramics.

This exhibition was generously sponsored by the Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Foundation on the occasion of the establishment of a Chair in Contemporary European Studies at Scripps College, California, USA.

The Courtauld Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Henry Moore Foundation.