During World War II Irish artists who had been living and working on the Continent and in Britain came home to neutral Ireland and began to react against the Royal Hibernian Academy and Nationalist Realism. This survey begins here and goes on to trace a half-century of political and cultural development - from the Irish Exhibition of Living Art through the creation of the Arts Council, the Rosc exhibitions and the advent of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, while looking at the artists themselves.