Artists
Modern
In 1943 a circle of painters broke from Colombo's academic salon and gave European modernism a form entirely of the island. By 1955 it hung at the Venice Biennale. This was the '43 Group, gathered here with the salon masters it broke from and the wider circle of the modern decades.
The '43 Group
The circle that gathered at Lionel Wendt's Colombo home in 1943 and resolved that Ceylon would have a modern art of its own. Its founders, the members who later joined, and the guests who showed with them broke from the academic salon, and what they began remains the pivot of the island's art.
Geoffrey BelingGampola 1907 – 1992 Colombo
George ClaessenColombo 1909 – 1999- Ralph Claessend. 1987 Melbourne
Aubrey ColletteCeylon 1920 – 1992 Australia
Justin DeraniyagalaColombo 1903 – 1967 Pasyala- Ranjit Fernandofl. 1952 – 1964, Ceylon
Donald FriendSydney 1915 – 1989
Richard Gabriel1924 – 2016 Melbourne- S.R. Kanakasabaifl. 1943 – 1948
George KeytKandy 1901 – 1993 Colombo
Sita Kulasekerad. 2001
L. T. P. ManjusriAlutgama 1902 – 1982
Ivan PeriesDehiwela 1921 – 1988 Southend-on-Sea
Harry Pieris1904–1988- Y.J. Thuringfl. 1943, later Australia
Neville WeereratneColombo 1931 – 2018 Melbourne
Lionel WendtColombo 1900 – 1944 Colombo- Walter Witharnefl. 1943 – 1945
Ahmed ben Driss el YacoubiFez 1928 – 1985 New York
The Salon Masters
The established painters the Group broke away from: the masters of the academic salon and the Ceylon Society of Arts, the art the modernists defined themselves against.
The wider circle
Figures of the modern decades who stood outside both the '43 Group and the salon: the teachers who trained the modernists, the temple-mural revival, and others who kept to their own road.
