Ecclesiart is an online project that raises awareness of significant works of modern and contemporary art since 1920 in UK churches and cathedrals.
The selected works represent the diversity of high quality church commissions and reflect developments in artistic practice and ecclesiastical art and design. You can explore the collection using the tiles below or by using the Ecclesiart map.
We seek to encourage increased responsibility towards works which may be under-appreciated or at risk and hope that this selection of works provides inspiring and challenging examples of art in churches useful to any parish or individual wishing to commission a new work.
We welcome nominations of new works to be added to Ecclesiart. Please email us with a short text about why you think a work of art should be included with a short theological reflection on the work and its context (no longer than 150 words) and if possible please include images. Please note that we do not accept nominations from artists for their own work.
All permanent works shortlisted for the Award for Art in a Religious Context are added to Ecclesiart. For all other nominations, the Director and trustees of Art and Christianity reserve the right to select works which they determine as meeting the criteria of aptness to context, artistic and technical merit and appropriate theological meaning.
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George Mayer-Marton: Crucifixion mural
George Mayer-Marton’s Crucifixion mural at the Church of the Holy Rosary (1954–5) was one of several commissions by the Roman Catholic church in the North-West, but only one of three that survive.
Graham Sutherland: Crucifixion
Graham Sutherland's Crucifixion, unveiled in 1963, was the third he had created for a church and the first and only commission that he received from a Roman Catholic Church, despite being a Catholic himself. It taps another theme found within the revival of sacred art, a focus on the horror of crucifixion. For Sutherland this derives from reflection on the terror inherent in both Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece and the reality of the Holocaust.