David Boyd Haycock - Paul Nash
Paul Nash, The Menin Road (1918–19) © The Imperial war Museum
PAUL NASH
As a painter, illustrator and critic, Paul Nash (1889-1946) was at the forefront of British art in the first half of the twentieth century. Educated at the Slade School of Art in London alongside Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler and Ben Nicholson, he was inspired by William Blake, Samuel Palmer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and C.R.W. Nevinson. Seeing active service on the Western Front before becoming an Official War Artist, Nash produced some of the greatest paintings of both the First and Second World Wars, including We Are Making a New World (1918), The Menin Road (1918–19), and Totes Meer (1940–41). In the intervening years he helped to introduce the British public to the thrilling potential of European modernism, experimenting with abstraction, helping to establish the Surrealist movement in Britain, and founding the short-lived Unit One group with Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Edward Wadsworth.
This comprehensively illustrated survey explores the full course of Paul Nash’s eventful career, from his profound love of the English landscape to the psychological forces that led him to pursue a lifelong vision of flight.
It offers a very readable short introduction to the life and work of this key twentieth-century British painter, illustrator and critic.
45 colour and 15 black-and-white illustration; ‘British Artists’ series, Tate Publishing, London, 2002 (reprinted 2007) ISNB 1 85437 436 2
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