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Paul Nash: The Landscape of Modernism
Paul Nash: The Landscape of Modernism
Amidst the unfolding violence of the early twentieth century, British artists struggled to portray modern warfare using any traditional visual style. Curator and writer David Boyd Haycock looks at one of the country's most famous official war artists, Paul Nash.
Nash represented his experiences of both World Wars in a wholly new way by drawing upon his knowledge of Modernist and European-influenced art movements such as Vorticism and Surrealism. Having struggled to depict the human form at art school, he turned to landscape painting as a means of expressing difficult emotions stirred by his experiences of war. Later in life, he returned to the places of his youth and it was there that he came to paint a final vision of peace and hope.
Time Period:
20th century
Themes:
Dr David Boyd Haycock is a freelance art historian, author, curator and lecturer. He read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has an MA in Art History from the University of Sussex and a PhD in History from the University of London. His books have included Paul Nash (2001) and A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009); he is currently writing a new biography of the bohemian Welsh artist Augustus John and his young contemporaries (forthcoming, 2019). He lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.
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