The Battle for Realism: Figurative Art in Britain during the Cold War 1945-1960

Artists: Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, John Bratby, Graham Sutherland, Michael Andrews, Lucian Freud et al. 
Author: James Hyman 
Publisher: Yale for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 
Date: 2001 
Condition: Very good, almost new. Some very minor chips to the lower edges of the dust jacket and some almost imperceptible discolouration to the white areas of the cover, otherwise a very clean and bright copy.

Hyman's book is still, after twenty years, a major work of scholarship on the figurative artists working in the period after WWII in Britain. Referencing earlier traditions, such as Sickert and even Hogarth, and looking at European trends gives Hyman the opportunity to contextualise the artists very well and he goes into great detail. Not a light read, it is nevertheless a valuable and informative one, and in the light of the growing appreciation of the contribution of the figurative artists to the British art scene of the period, feels to have been a particularly prescient publication