At the forefront of the exciting changes taking place in the art establishment at this time, Vera exhibited at and contributed to many of the most forward thinking and groundbreaking exhibitions of the period and was allied with many of the groups emerging during the early 1950's including the Constructivist Group, the Independent Group and the Modern Movement. She was considered one of the new and progressive abstract painters, a term that virtually became synonymous with modern, which included the likes of Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron, Victor Pasmore, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost. Indeed she exhibited in the very first post-war exhibition devoted to non-figurative art at the A.I.A Galleries in May 1951, organised by the artist Adrian Heath.
In the summer of 1951 this loosely defined 'group' received its first critical recognition for the AIA exhibition, in an article by Toni del Renzio in the magazine Typographica, a beautifully printed, high quality but short lived art journal edited by the graphic designer Herbert Spencer and husband of Vera. Toni del Renzio went on to singularly point out Vera's work from the influential 1953 exhibition held at Adrian Heath's studio at 22 Fitzroy Street, where Spencer exhibited alongside Terence Conran, Roger Hilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Scott, commenting that Vera 'nearly dominates the exhibition with her efficient and wholly charming collage…'
The paintings from this period have an air of the educator and student about them, they at once inform the viewer of the ideas, constraints and desires of the decade and yet also stand as compositions in their own right. The colours are pure and isolated and whilst each of the shapes acts and performs individually there is harmony in each of the canvases. Textiles, architecture, sculpture, graphic art and furniture design were all combined in the key exhibitions of the decade and these separate disciplines all shared a similar philosophy. Vera's paintings in turn each have a sense of keen independence and although in cases blocks of colour, angular shapes and strips of collage stand alone on the painted surface they also act together to create whole, cohesive and confident compositions.
The 1950's and 1960's were a prodigiously productive period for Vera, she exhibited alongside luminaries of the day at the 1951 Festival of Britain, with Gimpel Fils, Galerie Arnaud, and the Palais de Beaux Arts in Paris where she was hailed as one of the dominant influences in the renaissance of collage and was reviewed favourably throughout Europe by the likes of eminent art historian Herta Wescher who went on to become an ardent collector of her work. Her links with Paris and friendships with Paule Vezelay and the Group Espace led to joining the English branch and she exhibited with them at the Festival Hall in London, 1955 alongside Ithel Colquhoun, Sonia Delauney and Jean Arp.
Remaining very much in touch with the ongoing trends in Britain at this time, the later 1950's saw Vera's interest in collage take new direction and she began combining printed ephemera and typography with the principles of fine art painting; these more radical collage pieces travelled as far as the USA and the Rose Fried Gallery. A gallery specialising in aiding the introduction of important European abstract painters into the American art market they exhibited a selection of her works at the International Collage Exhibition in 1956. In 1964, (and now considered an authority in the modern interpretation of collage) Vera's work was included in Cinquante ans de collages; papier colles, assemblages, collages, du Cubisme a nos jours, at the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie in Saint-Étienne, confirming her place as an innovative and influential modern day artist.
It is interesting to note that whilst many of the painters of Vera's generation consistently experimented with ideas first mooted in the early 1950's Vera continued to work outside the perimeters laid down by those early abstract painters and she continued to observe in her own way the social changes around her. Out of the 1960's emerged new and faster communication, mass media, and the reinterpreting of everyday images. This new and inspired decade was passionately grasped at by the artists of the decade and Vera was no different in recording the mood and fervour of the period. Her collage and oil paintings take on a more intense humour, her palette changes from the utilitarian and ordered clarity of the 1950's, and they become less angular, less taut, less composed; she seems to embrace the relaxed yet excited tone of a society shrugging off the high expectations of the previous years and chooses bold and often brazen colours and shapes.
From her earliest years at the Slade and the student influences of Chagall, the Symbolists and the Nabis group she had an eye and awareness for noteworthy advancements in the art world. Her paintings, collages and watercolours incorporate very clearly the different fields of contemporary creative thinking. Whilst always adhering to the two dimensional surface throughout her career she pushed the confines of the canvas to ensure solidarity with the other creative disciplines around her.