Von Ribbentrop in St Ives:

Art and War in the Last Resort

An exhibition and book by Andrew Lanyon

16 July - 18 September 2011

Von Ribbentrop in St Ives is an exhibition and a book by painter, author and filmmaker Andrew Lanyon. The exhibition revolves around two seemingly unrelated moments in history. Joachim Von Ribbentrop, German Ambassador for Britain and later Foreign Minister in Nazi Germany holidayed in Cornwall in the 1930s and gathered intelligence in preparation for a German attack on Britain. The other event is the ‘discovery’ by the London-based artists Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood of Cornish fisherman-turned-painter Alfred Wallis in 1928.

Perfectly suited to the backdrop of the house at Kettle’s Yard, the exhibition includes works by Andrew Lanyon, his father Peter Lanyon, Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson, Alexander Calder and Naum Gabo, archival material, interactive models and specially commissioned works by Paul Chaney, Kenny Everett, Olly Hadfield, Chris James, Sam Lanyon, Peter Mates, Debbie Prosser, Paul Spooner, Stella Turk and Carlos Zapata.

video: Andrew Lanyon interviewed by Michael Bird

An exhibition in collaboration with Kestle Barton

Exhibition events

Andrew Lanyon - Von Ribbentrop in St Ives

Saturday, 16 July, 5.15-6pm
Artist and curator Andrew Lanyon introduces the exhibition Von Ribbentrop in St Ives.

Artist and curator Andrew Lanyon introduces the exhibition Von Ribbentrop in St Ives: Art and War in the Last Resort. Followed by the private view.

cost: Free

Peter Forbes - Painters and Naturalists at War

Wednesday, 27 July, 6.30-8pm
The talk focuses on artists who have been inspired by camouflage and mimicry

Peter Forbes is a writer and journalist with a long-standing interest in the relationship between art and science. His book Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage (Yale University Press, 2009) won the 2011 Warwick Prize for Writing. It tells the fascinating story of mimicry and camouflage in science, art, warfare and the natural world, through colourful stories and a dazzling cast of characters who were influenced and enthralled by their mystery - Roosevelt, Picasso, Nabokov, Churchill and Darwin, to name a few.
The talk focuses on artists who have been inspired by camouflage and mimicry and the skirmishes that have ensued when both artists and naturalists have tried to sign up as camoufleurs in wartime.
Forbes has written for the Guardian, Independent, The Times, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, World Medicine, Modern Painters and New Statesman, and is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at St George's, University of London.

cost: £5 - £3 concessions
buy online: University of Cambridge estore
or call 01223 748100.

Von Ribbentrop, Wallis and the Daughters of Radon

Tuesday, 6 September, 6.30-8pm

Artist and exhibition curator Andrew Lanyon talks about his practice, the exhibition Von Ribbentrop in St Ives: Art and War in the Last Resort and the publications that accompany it. The talk explores thought-provoking themes such as the debates on abstraction and realism in the interwar years, the role of the epic and the everyday in art, and the power of imagination and memory in shaping not just creative work but also war.

cost: £5 - £3 concessions
buy online: University of Cambridge estore
or call 01223 748100.

Michael Bird - The Palette and the Retort: Andrew Lanyon and St Ives

Tuesday, 13 September, 6.30-8pm

In this illustrated talk, Michael Bird explores the many incarnations of St Ives - both the place and its art history - in Andrew Lanyon’s work as artist, writer and filmmaker. Lanyon’s St Ives is an arena where science tests the limits of art but where no fact is safe from poetic transformation.
Michael Bird is the author of The St Ives Artists: A Biography of Place and Time and many other publications on art. He has presented programmes for BBC radio on Peter Lanyon and Alfred Wallis. His next book, 100 Ideas that Changed Art, is due out in 2012.

cost: £5 - £3 concessions
buy online: University of Cambridge estore
or call 01223 748100.

Lunchtime talk

Traitor Painters: Art And Espionage In Cornwall

Thursday, 28 July, 1.10-1.40pm
by Dr James Fox

Dr James Fox is Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College and teaches at the Department of History of Art of the University of Cambridge. In 2010 he presented the BBC4 documentary Art in Cornwall, and he is currently preparing two monographs on twentieth century British art: Business Unusual: Art in Britain during the First World Warand Art as Antidote: British art, 1914-45.

The English Douanier: Alfred Wallis's encounter with Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood

Thursday, 25 August, 1.10-1.40pm
by Sebastiano Barassi, Curator of Collections