Modernists & Mavericks

What can painting do? This question bound together a diverse community of artists in London after the Second World War. In answering it, many became household names: Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling, Howard Hodgkin and more.

Drawing on decades of interviews, Gayford unpicks the creative threads and maverick personalities of interwoven lives from postwar Soho bohemia to the Swinging Sixties. It is a story of friendships, experiences and artistic concerns shared between talented individuals who each developed their own singular approach to painting. All passionately believed that even in the age of new media, an ancient form could do fresh and marvellous things.

Table of Contents

1. 14 Abercorn Place 2. Pope Francis 3. Euston Road in Camberwell 4. The Spirit in the
Mass (at Borough Polytechnic) 5. Girl with Roses 6. Leaping into the Void 7. Translating
Life into Art: Bacon and Freud in the 50s 8. Two Climbers Roped Together: Auerbach and
Kossoff 9. An Arena in Which to Act 10. What Makes the Modern Home so Different?
11. The Situation in London, 1960 12. The Artist Thinks: Hockney and his Contemporaries