Storran Gallery

The Storran Gallery was a fashionable avant-garde art gallery that operated in London during the 1930s. Located in the City of Westminster, it became known for promoting modernist and contemporary British art alongside major European modernists. Under the direction of the prominent art critic Eardley Knollys, a friend of Pablo Picasso, the gallery played a notable role in London's interwar art scene before its eventual closure.

The Storran Gallery was founded by Ala Story, who brought together a directing team in 1937 that included Eardley Knollys and the artist Frank Coombs (1906-1941). The gallery initially occupied a prominent position at 106 Brompton Road in London SW3, directly opposite Harrods department store. This prestigious Knightsbridge location was later abandoned as the gallery moved first to Fitzroy Street and subsequently to 316 Euston Road. The relocation to Euston Road connected the gallery geographically with the artistic circle that would become associated with the Euston Road School. The gallery's most celebrated curatorial venture came in 1938 with The Jones Exhibition, conceived by artists Graham Bell and Tom Harrisson. In an unusual democratic gesture, they typed letters inviting over 800 London-based families with the surname Jones to attend an exhibition of London scenes painted exclusively by British artists named Jones.

The Storran Gallery's programme combined exhibitions of leading European modernists with a strong commitment to contemporary British painting. Its scope encompassed both established international names and emerging British artists, with particular attention to figurative painters associated with or sympathetic to the Euston Road School. The gallery's exhibitions in the late 1930s presented a wide range of artistic approaches, from the post-impressionist and modernist traditions of continental Europe to the more sober, observational methods of young British painters. This dual focus positioned the Storran Gallery as a bridge between avant-garde European art and the developing realist tendencies in 1930s Britain.

Pictures exhibited at the Storran Gallery in the late 1930s included works by major European modernists such as Picasso, Modigliani, and Dufy, demonstrating the gallery's access to significant international art. The British contingent was equally substantial, featuring Anthony Devas, Claude Rogers, Victor Pasmore, Rupert Shephard, Graham Bell, Clare Crossley, William Coldstream, Ivon Hitchens, Jean Varda, Derek Sayer, Lynton Lamb, Joan Souter-Robinson, Ivy Langton, and Derek Latymer-Sayer. A number of these British artists were members of the Euston Road School. The gallery also supported sculptural practice, giving the sculptor Willi Soukop his first one-man show in 1938.

owered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the Storran Gallery occupied three successive London addresses during its existence. It opened at 106 Brompton Road in the Knightsbridge district of Westminster, a location of considerable commercial prestige given its proximity to Harrods. The gallery subsequently relocated to Fitzroy Street, in the area associated with the Bloomsbury Group and earlier avant-garde activity, before its final move to 316 Euston Road. This northward progression across central London mirrored the shifting geography of the city's art world in the late 1930s, as commercial galleries followed the dispersal of artists' studios and collectors from exclusive western districts toward more affordable central and northern locations.

The Storran Gallery no longer exists as an operating institution. As a former art gallery, it has no current visiting hours, access arrangements, or active ownership. Its physical sites at 106 Brompton Road, Fitzroy Street, and 316 Euston Road have passed into other uses, and the gallery survives only in art historical records and the provenance of works that passed through its rooms. Its present role is that of a documented case study in the history of London's commercial gallery system and the promotion of modernist art in Britain during the interwar period.