With the deaths of Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton and Bryan Wynter in 1975 the post-war modern movement centred on St Ives seemed to be on the wane. During the next 25 years however, surviving members of the so-called St Ives ‘School’s’ heyday — W Barns-Graham, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Denis
Mitchell and others — worked with vigour.
 
The Tate Gallery’s landmark 1985 exhibition ‘St Ives 1939-64’ launched the rapidly rising fortunes of modern Cornish art which, after this defining moment, witnessed a surge in popularity and critical esteem. The establishment of the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in I 976 and Tate St Ives in 1993 ensured that St Ives remained a favoured option for working artists, critics, dealers, collectors or the interested public. In their wake an ever increasing number of younger artists moved to Cornwall attracted not by cheap rent as before but by the magic aura of the environment, by the cultural status of the local art scene and by the development of St Ives as a centre for cultural tourism.

Constructivist, hard edge or gestural abstraction based on landscape best defines St Ives art and these categories are separately dealt with in thematic chapters. But the iconography of the figure and of still life is also treated in depth. A study on potters since Bernard Leach complements the activity of several generations of painters and, to a lesser degree, sculptors.
 
This succinct and concise assessment of a vital place, in not only British but International Art, is considered against the background of a rapidly changing world during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. St Ives 1975 - 2005 provides a valuable reference book for art students, lecturers, curators and collectors.