St Ives was already an artists’ community when Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth settled there in 1939. They made it a centre for pioneering modernist art, attracting a generation of young artists to live and work there after the Second World War. These artists were interested in abstraction but were also inspired by the shapes and colours of the Cornish landscape. The exhibitions held by the Crypt Group and the Penwith Society of Artists helped establish St Ives as a beacon for British avant garde art. Southampton Art Gallery has a significant collection of work by artists connected to St Ives including Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Roger Hilton and Bryan Wynter.