Paul Nash
Born – London, England 1889
Died – Boscombe, England 1946
Paul Nash studied at the Slade School from 1910 to 1911. Primarily landscape painter, his early visionary drawings of faces superimposed on the landscape was influenced by Rossetti. Nash made his reputation as an official war artist during the First World War. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was influenced by the Surrealists. Through its confusion of interior and exterior space as well as through the mysterious, lurking presence of the black boat, Harbour and Room has a distinctly surreal feel. It clearly shows the influence of de Chirico, whose work he saw in London in 1928. Nash was one of the founders in 1933 of Unit One, an avant-garde group of British artists that included Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore among its members. During the Second World War, Nash once again worked as an official war artist. In his later landscape work he evolved a complex symbolism. Not content with recording the surface of the natural world, he wanted to penetrate beneath to express its spiritual essence. He also worked as a photographer, writer, book illustrator and a designer of textiles and scenery.
Masterpieces:
- Dead Sea
- Landscape of the Vernal Equinox.
text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.