Image: Tate Modern, London
An exhibition of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s work will run from 24 October 2026 to 3 May 2027, bringing together over 170 paintings, drawings and rarely seen archival materials in what is described as the largest and most comprehensive survey of her work ever presented.
Organised by Tate St Ives in collaboration with the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, the exhibition follows her eight-decade career, from early landscapes and studio interiors to the bold colour, rhythmic forms and sweeping gestures of her later work.
For Barns-Graham, landscape was more than something to observe: it was a source of sensation, memory and emotion. Inspired by Scotland, Cornwall and continental Europe, she transformed what she saw and felt into a distinctive visual language exploring inner perception and the external world—what she called ‘looking in / looking out’.
At the heart of the exhibition is the largest-ever museum presentation of her glacier works. Following a visit to Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier in 1949, Barns-Graham translated the experience of ice, light and movement into dynamic compositions that marked a turning point in her work.
The exhibition concludes with the vibrant Scorpio paintings of her final decades, charged with colour, energy and movement.
