Grosvenor School of Modern Art

The Grosvenor School of Modern Art located at 33 Warwick Square, Pimlico, London was opened in 1925 by Claude Flight and Iain MacNab. Flight taught the art of lino-cutting and MacNab taught wood engraving. Other teachers included Cyril Power who lectured on architecture, Sybil Andrews acted as Secretary and Lill Tschudi attended as a young Swiss student. Students from Australia included Ethel Spowers, Dorrit Black and Eveline Syme. Spowers, in particular, was influential in promoting the Grosvenor School in Australia by organising exhibitions. In 1929 Flight staged the first exhibition of British linocuts and the BM and V&A purchased prints for their collection. The Grosvenor School and its output enjoyed brilliant but all too short-lived popularity. By the mid-1930's interest had begun to decline and Flight held his final exhibition at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1939. It was over 40 years before these wonderful stylistic prints were rediscovered when Michael Parkin staged a series of exhibitions at his eponymous gallery raising not only the profile of Flight and his circle but also their value.

The work of Grosvenor School of Modern Art can now be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Australia and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary to mention a few. Following in the footsteps of Futurism, they capture the spirit of their time, immortalising the rapidly changing world of the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 2019 the Dulwich Picture Gallery staged an exhibition featuring many of the School's artists entitled 'Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking'. The poster illustrated below is signed Andrew Power which is a composite signature used by the artists Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power. They produced seven posters for London Transport in 1933.

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