Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980

National Galleries of Scotland announces Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980, an exploration of 80 years of art at the newly reopened Modern Two 

Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 

29 April 2023   

Free   

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)  

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) in Edinburgh will reopen on 29 April 2023 with a spectacular new exhibition, Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980.

This fascinating, free exhibition will take a journey through 80 years of art, from 1900 to the 1970s. Spanning a period of dramatic change, moving from the birth of the motorcar to the dawn of the space race, each work on display will be drawn from the Gallery’s world-class collection of modern art.  

Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 will take visitors through a series of six chapters across six rooms at Modern Two. Each chapter speaks of a particular moment from across the twentieth century, when artists rebelled against the previous generation, creating works which came to characterise a period.  

Beginning with French artists who painted with electrifying colour, the first room includes work by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Their brightly coloured landscape paintings were so radically different that the artists were given the derogatory label ‘Fauves’ – meaning ‘wild beasts’. The term stuck and Fauvism had a major impact on British and particularly Scottish art. 

Two fabulous new acquisitions, by Scottish Colourists FCB Cadell and JD Fergusson, feature in this room. Leith-born JD Fergusson, who lived in Paris before the First World War, was one of the key Scottish artists of the twentieth century.

Painted in 1911, Flowers and Pink Box, is vigorous and confident in its brushwork, bright and clashing in colour. The Rose and the Lacquer Screen, by FCB Cadell, combines several of his favourite still-life props: a rose in a transparent vase, a black fan and its trailing ribbon and a detail of the lacquered screen that dominated the drawing room of his house in Edinburgh’s New Town. These new acquisitions have been generously donated by private owners. 

Moving into the 1930s, artists such as Piet Mondrian believed that art could change society. This room will feature work by Alexander Calder, Paule Vézelay and Ben Nicholson.  

Entering the 1940s, abstraction and idealism were replaced by grim realism. Featuring work by Francis Bacon, Joan Eardley and Bet Low, these paintings and sculptures, created both during and immediately after the Second World War, speak of a new reality.  

The 1950s saw a battle between Abstraction and Realism. This is illustrated in Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 by two mural projects created for the great Festival of Britain exhibition of 1951, which will be shown together here for the first time. Josef Hermann’s project shows a row of miners – builders of a new socialist order; Victor Pasmore’s mural project is instead a daring essay glimpse of spiralling abstract forms. Exceptional creations by Alan Davie, Louise Nevelson, Fernand Léger, Eduardo Paolozzi and Elisabeth Frink will also be on display, making up the 1950s presentation. 

Art became celebratory, playful and experimental in the 1960s. Sculptors abandoned traditional materials such as bronze and marble for ‘soft sculpture’, exemplified in the work of Jann Haworth, Yayoi Kusama and Duane Hanson’s iconic Tourists.  

Throughout the 1970s, artists took Abstraction and Minimalism to extremes. Fred Sandback’s Untitled, 1971 – two coloured cords which cut across the corner of the room – questions the very notion of art as something with three-dimensional form or narrative meaning.  

The Keiller Library will focus on the motif of the hand in Surrealist art and writing. Drawing on works by artists like Man Ray, Edith Rimmington and Salvador Dali, from the national collection’s world-class holding of Surrealist books and archive material. 

Radical, questioning and experimental, this selection of one hundred works from the national collection shows ways in which artists have continually pushed the boundaries and created art which defines its time. These pieces still have the power to shock and make us think about our world today.  

Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, Sir John Leighton, said: ‘National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to reopen Modern Two with an exhibition that celebrates the strength of the national collection.

“Featuring a fascinating range of works by many of Scotland and the world’s greatest artists, Decades: The Art of Change 1900-1980 encourages visitors to think about how art can both reflect and change the way we see the world around us.

“We welcome you to join us on a voyage of discovery through 80 years of bold artistic achievement.’