Breaking the Ice poster
Graphic design by Christopher Bent

Past Lectures


An illustrated talk by Eric Shanes

New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, 53 New Walk, Leicester LE1 7EA
Click here for location map

7.15pm on 14 October 2008

In the mid-1940s a new seriousness, originality and inventiveness entered American painting through the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning. Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko and others.

In this talk Eric Shanes explores their tremendous breakthrough and shows how it was deeply rooted in expressing responses to modern realities, despite its non-representational imagery.

Eric Shanes is the author of books on Brancusi, Warhol, Hockney and other leading modern artists, as well as on the Impressionists in London and eleven bestselling books on JMW Turner. He is himself a practicising artist and printmaker.