MAJOR works by artists Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron can be seen alongside their international contemporaries in a new exhibition developed by Tate St Ives in collaboration with Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima).

The exhibition, curated to celebrate the 21 anniversary of the opening of Tate St Ives gallery, is the first major rethinking of St Ives art in nearly three decades.

International Exchanges: Modern Art and St Ives 1915-65 explores the wider national and international contexts that shaped art in the Cornish town.

The retrospective recognises that artists associated with the resort were connected with others around the world and that their experiences were part of an international search for new forms of art following the Second World War.

It features significant loans from public and private collections in the UK and abroad, including works by artists from across Europe and North America – from Georges Braque, Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky through to Sam Francis, Sandra Blow, Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis and Mark Rothko.

Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated book, Modern Art and St Ives, published by Tate. Paul Denison, principal lecturer in design history at Teesside University’s school of arts and media, is one of a group of experts who contributed an essay, which focuses on the work of Bernard Leach, studio potter and founder of the Leach Pottery in Cornwall.

The touring exhibition, which remains at mima until January 25, shows how the art of post-war St Ives was developed from two strands of modern art – the utopian ideals of constructivism that spread from Moscow in the 1910s, and a tradition of craft and the hand-made that unites the carvings of Brancusi and the ceramics of Bernard Leach and others.

St Ives artists have often been studied and interpreted in the context of Cornish landscape and of the political and economic situation in the UK from the 1940s-60s. This show invites visitors to consider the international connections and universal nature of modernist art.

Grain Sweeney, associate curator, said: “We are extremely excited to bring such a prestigious exhibition to mima. It’s fitting that a collection of work showcasing arts and crafts should come to Middlesbrough, a town renowned for its craft and ceramic heritage.”

The gallery is also exhibiting Diary Room, a compilation of emotional accounts of life on the front line in Afghanistan amassed by by official war artist Derek Eland, who is a former paratrooper.

UK and Afghan servicemen and women were invited to take some time in one of three diary rooms and write their thoughts on blank cards detailing their hopes and fears. These uncensored cards were then displayed in and around the room. The exhibition recreates one of those diary rooms for visitors to experience.

The diary rooms were in locations in the most high risk, dangerous areas in Afghanistan. Troops’ reactions varied from the shockingly brutal to the mundane, with a mix of comments from the profound to the humorous.

As an artist, Eland focuses on connecting with people about what it’s like to be human in stressful and difficult situations. He discovered that the soldiers often wrote with the same intensity with which they fought.

Diary Room continues until February 26.