‘Radical and joyous’: Beryl Cook show aims to prove she was a serious artist

Bar Girls, an early Beryl Cook painting. ‘She’s not making fun of her subjects at all – she’s painting people occupying spaces unapologetically’, said the show’s curator. Photograph: Courtesy of ourberylcook.com © John Cook 2025

In her lifetime, Beryl Cook’s colourful, vibrant paintings tended to be dismissed by most critics as mere kitsch or whimsy.

A major retrospective of Cook’s work opening in her adopted city of Plymouth next weekend makes the case that she was a serious, significant artist who skilfully chronicled a tumultuous period of social transformation.