KIT BARKER (1916-1988)

Cornwall | New York | New Mexico

These rare early works by Kit Barker were made between 1947 and 1952. These were exciting and formative years for Kit and his wife Ilse. Ilse (née Gross) was a German émigré who escaped to England in 1938 and only discovered that her parents had been murdered at Theresienstadt in 1947. She was an author and used the nom de plume Kathrine Talbot. In later life she wrote memoirs of her and Kit’s life together. Extracts from these memoirs are published at the bottom of this page by kind permission of her family. They are highly recommended to anyone interested in the post-war world of artists and writers, in Britain and America.

London born, Kit Barker did not attend university or any of the major art schools. However – bright, creative and inquisitive, he had an early interest in the work of Jung and Freud and amongst other creative endeavours (he once had a pottery in Fulham and was a fine singer) he was making complex Surrealist paintings in the 1930s. After serving in a tank regiment during the War, he decided to pursue a career as an artist. In the spring of 1947 he accompanied Bryan Wynter (1915-1975) to Zennor in Cornwall, then still one of the most fertile centres for modern British art. He stayed for two years, living first in an empty sail loft in Newlyn and then, having met Ilse, at Noon Veor, a cottage high above Zennor overlooking the bay. In Cornwall he came into contact with many artists and writers. Although quiet and shy by nature Kit evidently became a respected part of the artist community there, in 1948 showing in St Ives alongside Wilhemina Barns-Graham CBE (1912-2004), Sven Berlin (1911-1999), David Haughton (1924-1991), Patrick Heron CBE (1920-1999), Peter Lanyon (1918-1964), John Wells (1907-2000), Bryan Winter and Adrian Ryan (1920-1998).

In 1949 Kit and Ilse left England for New York City. Kit’s brother was the poet George Barker (1913–1991) and through his New York connections they entered a bohemian world of writers, painters, critics and collectors centred around Greenwich Village. They encountered many of the major figures in the emerging New York School, including Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), Willem (1904-1997) and Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989), William Baziotes (1912-1963) and Jimmy Ernst (1920-1984).

From New York the Barkers went to Yaddo, the famous artists’ community at Saratoga Springs, both feeling they had discovered somewhere they could work seriously. They returned to Yaddo several times, Ilse writing the bulk of her first novel on their second visit and Kit preparing for a one-man show in New York. He also taught for a period at nearby Skidmore College.

From New York the Barkers eventually travelled across the country. First, they went to Alton, Illinois, to stay with the great collectors Fred (1891-1986) and Florence Olsen, who became Kit’s first serious patrons and remained his close friends throughout his life. They then headed west, via Kansas and Denver, to Taos. Taos and the New Mexican landscape were a revelation. The Barkers stayed in an adobe house at Rancho de Taos belonging to their Yaddo friend, the writer William Goyen (1915-1983), built on land given to him by Frieda Lawrence (1879-1956). Taos had long been associated with Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962), Frieda and D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Dorothy Brett (1883-1977), the English painter who had followed the Lawrences to New Mexico. Here the Barkers got to know Brett well and visited Frieda Lawrence, acquainting themselves with another community in which painting and writing were closely intertwined.

After Taos the Barkers went on to California and ultimately to San Francisco where Kit exhibited at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and taught at the California School of Fine Arts. Ilse’s first novel, Fire in the Sun was also published while they were in California. Their time in the United States having proved the creative catalyst they had both hoped for they returned to England in 1952, settling in Sussex, while keeping up their American friendships for the rest of their lives.

The works below that Kit made during this period (1947-1952) still show the influence of Surrealism, psychoanalysis and his life-long passion for music. He had a fascination with techniques through which images were revealed or conjured, rather than fashioned: wax etchings, string prints, automatic drawings and offsets. His imagery is totemic and has the feeling of deriving from dream or deep history. Formally, he always paid close attention to the musicality of his compositions – to movement (rhythm) and balance (harmony). His work tends towards two dimensional pattern, perhaps as a result of having lost an eye in his teens; he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life.

While Kit’s technical interests remained largely the same in these years, his imagery changed with his surroundings. The works made in Cornwall (Nos. 1–4) are rooted in the western European literary tradition: dramatic narrative, satyrs, nymphs, the bull, the poet. In Saratoga Springs (Nos. 5-8) his subjects become animals and symbols, at times reminiscent of cave paintings but perhaps showing an awareness of Native American use of animal symbolism. The extraordinary primeval figure painted at Alton, Illinois (No.9), although titled ‘Amazon’ may have been influenced by Fred Olsen’s interest in Pre-Columbian and Arawak art.

Taos undoubtedly had the deepest effect on Kit’s work (Nos.10-14). The Pueblo people, adobe buildings and desert landscape encapsulated many of the elements he had already been exploring in his work. Ilse recounts how Kit ‘painted the desert, the rocks, the sagebrush and the pueblo shapes for many years’ and that the desert ‘remained forever in our inner eye’.

*While little has been published on Kit Barker’s work there is a good archive of ephemera (exhibition catalogues, newspaper cuttings etc.) at Pallant House in Chichester. Some of the images above are photographs of items in their collection.

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These works will hang together as a group at the gallery until Saturday 2nd May 2026

Ilse Barker (1921-2006)
(AKA Kathrine Talbot)

The following pieces of writing are published here by kind permission of her family.
Copyright: The Artist’s Estate

Anyone interested in Kathrine Talbot is encouraged to read her novels and a recent biography
Becoming Kathrine Talbot: A Jewish Refugee and the Novelist She Invented by Christoph Ribbat (2024).

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Coming soon …