I can’t remember when there was last such an abundance of wonderful exhibitions in London. But if I could frogmarch our current cabinet to only one show, it would be to Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-1965 at the Barbican. Bordered by barbed wire and suffused with atomic dread, it speaks volumes both about the darkness of conflict, and the particular quality of the light that rises after the bombs cease falling. Most strikingly of all, a sizable amount of the work was made by immigrants to these islands. Of 48 artists, I counted 11 who were born elsewhere.
Some are well known: the painter Frank Auerbach, who arrived in Britain thanks to the Kindertransport; the potter Hans Coper, who fled Germany in 1939, only to be interned here as an enemy alien. But there are other, less familiar names, too: Magda Cordell, a Hungarian refugee whose Figure 59 (1958) recalls a body torn by shrapnel; Eva Frankfurther, another escapee from Nazi Germany, whose tender double portrait, West Indian Waitresses (1955), adorns an exhibition poster; Gustav Metzger, the son of Polish Jews who arrived here as a boy, and whose swirling installation, Liquid Crystal Environment (1965), is a highlight of the show.
