Peter Lanyon’s Fly Away will lead the sale of a major collection of modern British art at Sotheby’s London on June 29.

Most of the paintings were produced in St Ives and London during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Fly Away (1961) is from Peter Lanyon's series of Gliding Paintings 

At the time, St Ives, a tiny Cornish fishing village, was punching well above its weight as a centre for abstract art.

Artists Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth were the first to move there in the early 1930s.

Others followed after the war, drawn by the radiant quality of the light and the promise of a burgeoning community far from the ruins of post-war London.  

Lanyon was a native Cornishman and a central figure in the history of the St Ives school. A keen glider, he composed many of his most famous works (including the present lot) while in the air.

It’s expected to make £300,000-500,000 ($387,663-646,105).

Other St Ives artists featured in the sale include Patrick Heron, Terry Frost and Bryan Winter.

London is represented by artists including Reg Butler, a former assistant to sculptor Henry Moore, whose Machine (1953) is valued at £60,000-80,000 ($77,532-103,376).

Frances Christie, head of modern and post-war British art at Sotheby’s, said: “Put together over thirty years, this collection tells the story of British Art during the mid-20th Century when London had a serious rival as the centre of the British art world in St Ives, a tiny fishing village at the far Western tip of England.”

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