The exhibition "Gladys Hynes: Radical Lives" opens this month at Charleston in Lewes, aiming to resurrect the career of Gladys Hynes (1888-1958), a forgotten artist who once represented Britain at the 1924 Venice Biennale. The show brings together 120 paintings, drawings, graphic designs, and sculptural pieces, including works by Hynes and her contemporaries, curated by Sacha Llewellyn. Hynes trained with Stanhope Forbes, Frank Brangwyn, and William Nicholson, worked with Roger Fry's Omega Workshops, associated with Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists, and was commissioned by Ezra Pound to illustrate his Cantos. Despite her achievements, only one of her paintings is in a British public collection.
The exhibition matters because it addresses the near-total erasure of a significant female artist from early 20th-century British avant-garde history, raising questions about why her name is absent from biographies and public collections. Curator Sacha Llewellyn notes that antisemitic and racist tropes in some of Hynes's paintings may partly explain her eclipse, but she hopes to open conversations about Hynes's politics and those of her circle. The show not only revives Hynes's five-decade career but also highlights broader issues of gender, political radicalism, and historical memory in the art world, with the exhibition traveling to the Wolfsonian in Florida next year.