The
Collection
Over
a period of some fifty years George Dannatt and his wife Ann have acquired
paintings, sculptures and work in other mediums, primarily of the post
war lyrical abstract painters associated with the West Penwith (St. Ives)
area, though there are also works in similar vein from other painters,
including French and Italian. Thus The Collection contains acquired work
together with work by George Dannatt. As to Dannatt's own work, sculptor
Denis Mitchell once remarked "you are the only one who has continued
to work in the tradition of the Penwith constructivist abstract school".
As Professor Brandon Taylor wrote when he first saw the Collection "As
I see it, the combination of your own work together with that of other
British modernists ... represents one of the best accounts of post-war
British abstract art in private hands centred upon the St. Ives painters
and sculptors but with so many strong and significant connections to the
continental Constructivist tradition."
There has been two major exhibitions which made use of a selection from The Collection, firstly at Winchester School of Art's 'Winchester Gallery' in July 2004 but, more importantly and comprehensively at the Southampton City Art Gallery in their exhibition 'Elements of Abstraction (Space, Line & Interval in Modern British Art)' in 2005/2006.