AFTER wowing art lovers in London, Swindon’s modern art collection has returned to the town and is set to take centre stage in a new exhibition from next week.

The collection, which brings together a number of nationally important works, includes pieces by Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach, Richard Hamilton and Leon Kossoff and has been on display at the Osborne Samuel Gallery in the heart of Mayfair for the past month.

The artwork initially caught the eye of Osborne Samuel Gallery director Gordon Samuel after he discovered some of the pieces were being stored out of the public’s gaze at Swindon Museum because of a lack of space.

Entitled Modern Times, the exhibition starts on Wednesday at the Bath Road museum and art gallery and will run until July 1.

Curator Sophie Cummings said the whole team was delighted at how well the works were received by people in Mayfair and believe they have achieved their aim of showing people what Swindon has to offer in the art world.

“The feedback from the people who saw the artwork in London has been amazing with many saying they are astonished by the quality,” she said.

“I think for many people it was a real revelation and that is one of the reasons we did it, to show off what amazing artwork we have here.”

In 1976, RB Kitaj curated an influential exhibition entitled The Human Clay, and featured many great artists including Freud, Kossoff, Auerbach and Maggi Hambling. He described this group of artists as the ‘School of London’ due to their connections to the capital, its art schools and galleries and even 50 years on, their bold, representational painting continues to inspire and captivate visitors.

The exhibition will look into how these group of painters transformed the British art world.

Sophie added: “The artwork focuses on the 1960s to 1980s which was a really exciting time with lots of things going on at the time and we thought it was a good opportunity to have all of the artwork in London where everyone could see it in one go.

“Now it is back here, we are arranging some pieces in different ways so that even if people have seen some stuff before, they might not have seen others and we hope people come down and have a look for free.”

Over the last few decades, Swindon has continued to collect the best of British art, working closely with the Contemporary Art Society, Art Fund and other supporters to acquire examples of almost every major movement in British art, from traditional portraits by Spencer Gore and Mark Gertler, landscape paintings by Richard Nevinson and John Nash, through to examples of British abstraction by Roger Hilton and Terry Frost and Pop Art by Richard Hamilton.

For more information about the exhibition, visit swindonmuseumandartgallery.org.uk.