DANNATT, George (1915 – 2009)

George Dannatt was an outstanding and inspirational figure in the story of the later St Ives School. He represented a rare breed of cultural polymath: musician, critic, practising artist, connoisseur and collector of modern art. He also belonged to a small group of patron collectors who practised what they preached. Dannatt produced a solid oeuvre of abstract painting inspired by, and in concert with, the St Ives Modernists whose work he so admired. Like London-based collectors John and Anne Christopherson and Ken Powell, George and Ann Dannatt systematically collected art one can summarise as three-quarters geometric and abstract, but with an oblique sensuality and associative landscape naturalism. Over many years Dannatt collected the work of, among others, John Wells, Terry Frost, Denis Mitchell, Alexander Mackenzie, Patrick Heron and Roy Conn. Many choice items from this second wave of Cornish Modernism have been donated to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and a smaller group of works to Southampton Art Gallery, together with good examples of Dannatt’s own work. Jackie Sarafopoulos, owner and Director of Modern Contemporary Art has had a long association with The George Dannatt Trust; from 1999-2003 she worked with George and Ann Dannatt to catalogue their extensive art collection and curate and manage their busy exhibitions agenda. She was appointed a Trustee from 2003 – 2017, acting as the Trust Secretary. In 2009, following the death of George Dannatt she was appointed Art Executor , a position she saw through and completed when Ann Dannatt’s passed away in 2019. In 2017 Jackie became the Creative and Operations Director of The George Dannatt Trust until its closure in Autumn 2022. Modern Contemporary Art purchased the remaining artwork by George Dannatt and the George and Ann Dannatt collections from The George Dannatt Trust in Spring 2022.