Although they did not see themselves as a group or school, the term St Ives School is often used in reference to the artists associated with the fishing village of St Ives in West Cornwall, which established itself as an internationally recognized center of abstract art from the 1940s through the 1960s. Both the special quality of the light and the landscape attracted painters to St. Ives from the beginning of the 19th century. Even before the outbreak of World War II, a small circle of avant-garde artists settled there, and after the war a number of other well-known painters followed them to St Ives or its vicinity. The common interest of the St Ives School of Art was the local landscape and abstraction.
Ben Nicholson O.M. 
