Part 1: Modern British and Latin American Art

To mark its centenary, The Mayor Gallery presents Celebrating 100 Years, Part 1, the first in a series of three exhibitions exploring the gallery’s rich history and ongoing commitment to international art. This first iteration focuses on the between the wars in Britain and post-war Latin American artists whose practices redefined abstraction, surrealism, and the search for new forms of expression.

The exhibition presents a dialogue between two parallel modernist movements separated by geography but united by a movement. In Britain, artists such as John Banting, Emmy Bridgwater, Edward Burra, Stanley William Hayter, Roland Penrose, Peter Rose Pulham, William Roberts, Edith Rimmington, and Graham Sutherland were creating distinctive responses to Surrealism, social upheaval, and the reawakening of abstraction. Sculptor F. E. McWilliam’s sensuous organic forms stand as sculptural counterpoints to these visionary painters, while Roberto Matta and Raul Lozza bring a cross-continental energy that foreshadows post-war experimentation.

Exhibited alongside, Latin American artists whose work during the same decades mirrored European modernism. Wifredo Arcay, Feliza Bursztyn, Carlos Cairoli, Waldemar Cordeiro, Gego, Almir da Silva Mavignier, Alice Rahon, Mira Schendel, and Luis Tomasello show how abstraction in Latin America became both a language of innovation and a form of quiet resistance. Together, these artists demonstrate that the dialogue between Europe and Latin America during the mid-century was one of mutual influence and creative reinvention.