sculptor, promoted alongside Victor Pasmore, William Scott and Barbara Hepworth by the Festival of Britain. The "London School" of figurative painters including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, and Michael Andrews have received widespread international recognition, while other painters such as John Minton and John Craxton are characterized as Neo-Romantics. Graham Sutherland, the Romantic landscapist John Piper (a prolific and popular lithographer), the sculptor Elisabeth Frink, and the industrial townscapes of L.S. Lowry also contributed to the strong figurative presence in post-war British art. According to William Grimes of The New York Times "Lucien Freud and his contemporaries transformed figure painting in the 20th century. In paintings like Girl With a White Dog (1951-52), Freud put the pictorial language of traditional European painting in the service of an anti-romantic, confrontational style of portraiture that stripped bare the sitter’s social facade. Ordinary people — many of them his friends — stared wide-eyed from the canvas, vulnerable to the artist’s ruthless inspection." In 1952 at the 26th Venice Biennale a group of young British sculptors including Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, William Turnbull and Eduardo Paolozzi, exhibited works that demonstrated anti-monumental, expressionism. Scottish painter Alan Davie created a large body of abstract paintings during the 1950s that synthesize and reflect his interest in mythology and zen. Abstract art became prominent during the 1950s with Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron, who were part of the St Ives school in Cornwall. In 1958, along with Kenneth Armitage and William Hayter, William Scott was chosen by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the XXIX Venice Biennale. In the 1950s, the London-based Independent Group formed; from which pop art emerged in 1956 with the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts This Is Tomorrow, as a British reaction to abstract expressionism. The International Group was the topic of a two-day, international conference at the Tate Britain in March 2007. The Independent Group is regarded as the precursor to the Pop Art movement in Britain and the United States. The This is Tomorrow show featured Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and artist John McHale amongst others, and the group included the influential art critic Lawrence Alloway as well. In the 1960s, Sir Anthony Caro became a leading figure of British sculpture along with a younger generation of abstract artists including Isaac Witkin, Phillip King and William G.