The Worlds of Stephen Spender

At his home in Italy, Matthew Spender shares personal recollections of his father along with photographs and material from the family’s archives. ‘My father thought that all works of art come from the same place – the same inspiration – and it could become a poem, or a piece of sculpture, or even a symphony.’
Hauser & Wirth’s presentation at Frieze Masters is inspired by the fascinating life of poet, essayist, editor, and public intellectual, Stephen Spender. The project explores both Spender’s progressive ideas and his artistic friendships. The presentation features important works by artists he personally knew and collected – including Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, Henry Moore, Giorgio Morandi, Serge Poliakoff and Yannis Tsarouchis – along with international artists representative of Spender’s political and social interests. Positioning twentieth-century masterworks in dialogue provides a compelling context to discover the enduring relevance of his ideas.

Spender and his circle passionately believed that art and literature could transcend political or ideological divides to help find a common humanity at a time when the world was in crisis. Through his travels in the 1930s, Spender had experienced first-hand the end of Weimar-era democracy, the rise of Hitler and the Spanish Civil War. Spender’s conviction in ‘a shared subject matter’ shaped his own writing, his activities as an editor and his political beliefs. He felt a great kinship with artists and intellectuals including W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Lucian Freud, Cecil Day Lewis, Michael Andrews, Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach, Christopher Isherwood, David Hockney and Pablo Picasso. His wife Natasha Spender was an erudite and accomplished concert pianist and their home became a meeting place for artists, writers, filmmakers, intellectuals, and politicians from London and around the world.

Director: Cosima Spender
Editor: Tommaso Gallone
Cinematography: Nicolas Beaugonin
Courtesy Stephen Spender Trust
© Peacock Pictures 2018