Скачать или смотреть Comrades in Art – For Peace, Democracy and Cultural Freedom

In the autumn of 1933 a group of twenty-something largely unknown artists and designers felt impelled to begin organising against the threat of fascism and war. They determined to create a London-based artists’ auxiliary in support of progressive causes.

Within two years the Artists International Association had won the support of some of the best-known artists of the era from Laura Knight to Henry Moore and was staging the landmark exhibition Artists Against Fascism and War in Soho Square. By April 1937, with a membership approaching a thousand, the AIA organised the First British Artists Congress – an event that laid the groundwork for positive postwar developments.

Andy Friend’s new book – Comrades in Art, Artists Against Fascism 1933-43 sets the rich history of the AIA in a global context. In this talk he will discuss how recently re-discovered sources have shed new light on the role of political emigrés from its first founding meetings to the landmark For Liberty exhibition, held in the spring of 1943. The young founders of the AIA succeeded in reaching upward generationally and outward politically to build a broadly based organisation with strong international links. In doing so they united artists of many different aesthetic persuasions in opposition to divisive populism, authoritarianism and oppression – how they did so is a tale for our time.

Andy Friend was involved in community politics in the 1970s and worked for the Greater London Council in the 1980s before becoming Chief Executive of the City of Melbourne in the 1990s. After returning from Australia, he held senior positions in a number of major infrastructure organisations. In 2017 Andy published Ravilious & Co; the Pattern of Friendship and co-curated the eponymous Towner Gallery touring exhibition. In 2020 he wrote John Nash – The Landscape of Love and Solace (2020) and co-curated its accompanying Towner touring exhibition. Artists International – The First Decade, curated by Andy, is showing in the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery at Tate Britain until March 2026. Comrades in Art – a more extensive exhibition – will open at the Towner Eastbourne on May 6th 2026.

This online event took place on 4 November 2025