The Flickr Instituteofcontemporaryarts Image Generatr

Leaping bulls from the Institute of Contemporary Art Visitors' Book, 1950
Pablo Picasso
Watercolour and coloured inks

Picasso visited Britain in November 1950 to attend the third International Peace Congress in the city of Sheffield. It was organised by the Communist Party, which he had joined in 1944. He also stayed with the Surrealist artist and writer Roland Penrose (1900–84) in Sussex. While there, Picasso drew these leaping bulls in the visitors' book of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, which Penrose co-founded.*


From the exhibition


Picasso: printmaker
(November 2024 – March 2025)

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was one of the most inventive and influential talents ever to explore the medium of print.
In addition to his many paintings, sculptures and drawings, the Málaga-born artist made over 2,400 prints during his career. From his early years as an artist in Paris to his old age in the South of France, printmaking offered Picasso the opportunity to develop ideas, tell stories and embark on new creative adventures.
This exhibition offered insights into Picasso's life through his art, including his complex relationships with women and his partnerships with printers, publishers and other artists. Spanning his entire career, it followed his engagement with different printmaking techniques and his changing approaches to making art.
The British Museum holds by far the UK's largest and most representative collection of Picasso's prints. The exhibition featured prints made in the early 1900s, before and after Picasso's breakthrough painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), which paved the way for Cubism. It also included a group of prints from the Vollard Suite, a series of 100 etchings made in the 1930s that shows the influence of classical art on Picasso's work and reflects his tumultuous personal life.
Picasso's focus on lithography and then linocut printing following the Second World War was explored, as was his move to the South of France, marking a change of lifestyle that is evident in his work. Thematic threads included the circus, the bullfight, love and sex, and Picasso's interactions on paper with artists from the past. The exhibition ended with a selection from the 347 Suite, named after the number of prints in the series, which Picasso completed aged 86 in 1968, in a remarkable burst of late creativity.
[*British Museum]

Taken in British Museum

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Live at ICA | Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 17.03.2026

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Photography by Mackaisharp

Vintage gelatin silver print

Mayne's close-cropped photograph of a couple of young 'Teds' was chosen for the invitation card to his first solo exhibition in 1956 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Seeking a dramatically close-up encounter, Mayne recalled that he was about four feet away from the couple when the photograph was taken. The pair look at him searchingly but without apparent emotion, although we might see a newfound confidence and stridency in their demeanour.*


Taken from the exhibition


Roger Mayne: Youth
(Jun – Sept 2024)

Acclaimed British photographer Roger Mayne (1929–2014) was famous for his evocative documentary images of young people growing-up in Britain in the mid-1950s and ‘60s.
This exhibition, of around 60 almost exclusively vintage photographs, includes many of his iconic street images of children and teenagers, alongside an almost entirely unknown selection of intimate and moving later images of his own family at home in Dorset, as well as those taken on his honeymoon in Spain in 1962.
A pioneering, self-taught photographer, Roger Mayne (1929-2014) came to prominence in Britain in the mid-1950s. He is renowned for images that portray post-war communities struggling with poverty and deprivation while remaking their lives in the hope of a brighter future. In London's streetscape, Mayne found an unruly energy and unconventional beauty that he could harness in service of his art. His images of young people - the focus of this exhibition - embody the various states of fragility, love and resilience that defined a still unsettled post-war society.
This exhibition presents around sixty photographs, almost all vintage prints, made by Mayne at the time he took them. It combines a selection of his most famous street photographs taken in London's Southam Street and its immediate neighbourhood in Kensal Town, on the northern borders of Notting Hill, with subsequent and largely unknown bodies of work that date from 1962 onward. These later works begin with a series of images taken in Spain when the photographer was on honeymoon with his wife, the playwright Ann Jellicoe (1927-2017). It was here that Mayne felt re-energised as a photographer and captured some of his most hauntingly beautiful and powerful images. Thereafter, having purchased a property in the bucolic surroundings of Dorset in the mid-1960s, the couple and their young children increasingly divided their time between London and the countryside until their permanent move to Lyme Regis in 1975. With this major life change, Mayne's commitment to documenting Britain's youth was replaced by a fervent dedication to recording his own children growing up.
For Mayne, these domestic images were no less important than his street photography. Possessing an honesty, warmth and humour derived from a familial intimacy with his subject, this intense form of domestic scrutiny is not only artistically innovative but also largely unique in the output of any leading British photographer working in the post-war decades.
Mayne believed in photography's power to document, but he also knew that objective truth was ultimately elusive. He thought of his images - all taken with a lightweight handheld camera - as dramatisations, ones in which he frequently sought a direct encounter with the subject he was photographing. Working independently and always intuitively, Mayne produced work that is ultimately characterised by compassion for his subjects and a highly distinctive aesthetic that embraces both the graceful and the unruly. Increasingly appreciated as a pivotal figure in documentary photography's emergence as a major art practice in post-war Britain, Mayne created compelling images that resonate powerfully across the years.
[*The Courtauld]

Taken in The Courtauld

All photos are taken by Roger Mayne

Vintage gelatin silver print

Mayne's close-cropped photograph of a couple of young 'Teds' was chosen for the invitation card to his first solo exhibition in 1956 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Seeking a dramatically close-up encounter, Mayne recalled that he was about four feet away from the couple when the photograph was taken. The pair look at him searchingly but without apparent emotion, although we might see a newfound confidence and stridency in their demeanour.*


Taken from the exhibition


Roger Mayne: Youth
(Jun – Sept 2024)

Acclaimed British photographer Roger Mayne (1929–2014) was famous for his evocative documentary images of young people growing-up in Britain in the mid-1950s and ‘60s.
This exhibition, of around 60 almost exclusively vintage photographs, includes many of his iconic street images of children and teenagers, alongside an almost entirely unknown selection of intimate and moving later images of his own family at home in Dorset, as well as those taken on his honeymoon in Spain in 1962.
A pioneering, self-taught photographer, Roger Mayne (1929-2014) came to prominence in Britain in the mid-1950s. He is renowned for images that portray post-war communities struggling with poverty and deprivation while remaking their lives in the hope of a brighter future. In London's streetscape, Mayne found an unruly energy and unconventional beauty that he could harness in service of his art. His images of young people - the focus of this exhibition - embody the various states of fragility, love and resilience that defined a still unsettled post-war society.
This exhibition presents around sixty photographs, almost all vintage prints, made by Mayne at the time he took them. It combines a selection of his most famous street photographs taken in London's Southam Street and its immediate neighbourhood in Kensal Town, on the northern borders of Notting Hill, with subsequent and largely unknown bodies of work that date from 1962 onward. These later works begin with a series of images taken in Spain when the photographer was on honeymoon with his wife, the playwright Ann Jellicoe (1927-2017). It was here that Mayne felt re-energised as a photographer and captured some of his most hauntingly beautiful and powerful images. Thereafter, having purchased a property in the bucolic surroundings of Dorset in the mid-1960s, the couple and their young children increasingly divided their time between London and the countryside until their permanent move to Lyme Regis in 1975. With this major life change, Mayne's commitment to documenting Britain's youth was replaced by a fervent dedication to recording his own children growing up.
For Mayne, these domestic images were no less important than his street photography. Possessing an honesty, warmth and humour derived from a familial intimacy with his subject, this intense form of domestic scrutiny is not only artistically innovative but also largely unique in the output of any leading British photographer working in the post-war decades.
Mayne believed in photography's power to document, but he also knew that objective truth was ultimately elusive. He thought of his images - all taken with a lightweight handheld camera - as dramatisations, ones in which he frequently sought a direct encounter with the subject he was photographing. Working independently and always intuitively, Mayne produced work that is ultimately characterised by compassion for his subjects and a highly distinctive aesthetic that embraces both the graceful and the unruly. Increasingly appreciated as a pivotal figure in documentary photography's emergence as a major art practice in post-war Britain, Mayne created compelling images that resonate powerfully across the years.
[*The Courtauld]

Taken in The Courtauld

All photos are taken by Roger Mayne

Lou Barlow onstage at The ICA in London, 26th November 2025