Abstract
There are many tendencies in contemporary art in Great Britain. The break-up of the Surrealist Movement as a direct consequence of the Second World War is a historical event which needs to be explained. The leading personalities of the movement maintained a revolutionary attitude in the pre-war period, and this made it necessary for them to flee from the Nazi tyranny. The failure of the movement to reconstitute itself after the war contributed to make artists independent. Moreover, the post war years presented an uncertain future, and an uncertain future always threatens the risk of disaster. People were already socked by the war un-settled their world of conventional values, and gave rise to chaos. In Britain, horror was at the heart of two of the most important exhibitions of the past half-century. In 1949 the now defunct Hanover Gallery in London was filled with painting after painting of unremitting pain, in an exhibition that announced the arrival of Francis Bacon and heralded one of the most extraordinary success stories in 20th-century art. Bacon's paintings reveal his personal torment celebrated as an artistic revelation of the human condition.
