Beaches, Beatles and a broken marriage: how Wilhelmina Barns-Graham became a radical art icon

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s first full-career retrospective has opened at Tate St Ives, bringing renewed attention to a British modernist who was overshadowed in accounts of the St Ives art scene. Her paintings turned glaciers, shorelines and other subjects into vivid, sometimes unsettling forms, and her career challenged expectations of women artists.

Born in St Andrews in 1912, Barns-Graham moved to St Ives in 1940 and became part of its artistic circle. She continued experimenting with colour, geometry and repetition for eight decades, until her death in 2004 aged 91; a period of recognition in the 1950s faded as her work became harder to categorise and sell.