Paul Nash was born in London. After failing the entrance exam for for the Navy, he studied at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Slade School of Fine Art, both in London. He was appointed an Official War Artist in World War I. Between the wars he designed textiles, stage scenery, costumes and ceramics, as well as painting in oil and watercolour. All of his work shows a characteristically analytical approach, reducing a subject to its essential form, but remaining conscious of the intangible mystery in all matter. His touch is typically gentle and delicate - none of his forms, however abstract, are made to look entirely mechanical or geometric.

During the 1930s Nash was fascinated by surrealism and by the power of objects to evoke associations alien to their basic forms, and his own work reveals these preoccupations. Objects which held special meaning for him - the sun and moon, the sunflower and fungus, early burial mounds, rocks, the sea and clumps of trees - were drawn together in landscapes empty of people, but which still suggest their presence. In 1933 he established Unit One, a group of artists that included Henry Moore, Edward Wadsworth, Edward Burra and Ben Nicholson, and whose aims were to promote modern art through a blend of abstraction and surrealism. During World War II he was again appointed an Official War Artist, producing memorable images of the war-torn countryside and the dogfights above, which in turn are sinister and lyrical, surreal yet rooted in the traditions of English landscape painting.

Further reading:
Paul Nash, Outline: An Autobiography , Faber & Faber, London 1951
Andrew Causey, Paul Nash, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1980
Paul Nash Places, Arts Council of Great Britain 1989
Paul Nash Aerial Creatures, Imperial War Museum 1996

Glossary

  • Abstraction

    To abstract means to remove, and in the art sense it means that artist has removed or withheld references to an object, landscape or figure to produce a simplified or schematic work. This method of creating art has led to many critical theories; some theorists considered this the purest form of art: art for art’s sake. Unconcerned as it is with materiality, abstraction is often considered as representing the spiritual.

  • Ceramics

    Clay based products produced from non-metallic material and fired at high temperature. The term covers all objects made of fired clay, including earthenware, porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta.

  • Landscape

    Landscape is one of the principle genres of Western art. In early paintings the landscape was a backdrop for the composition, but in the late 17th Century the appreciation of nature for its own sake began with the French and Dutch painters (from whom the term derived). Their treatment of the landscape differed: the French tried to evoke the classical landscape of ancient Greece and Rome in a highly stylised and artificial manner; the Dutch tried to paint the surrounding fields, woods and plains in a more realistic way. As a genre, landscape grew increasing popular, and by the 19th Century had moved away from a classical rendition to a more realistic view of the natural world. Two of the greatest British landscape artists of that time were John Constable and JMW Turner, whose works can be seen in the Tate collection (www.tate.org.uk). There can be no doubt that the evolution of landscape painting played a decisive role in the development of Modernism, culminating in the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists . Since then its demise has often been predicted and with the rise of abstraction, landscape painting was thought to have degenerated into an amateur pursuit. However, landscape persisted in some form into high abstraction, and has been a recurrent a theme in most of the significant tendencies of the 20th Century. Now manifest in many media, landscape no longer addresses solely the depiction of topography, but encompasses issues of social, environmental and political concern.

  • Oil

    A medium in which ground pigments are mixed to produce a paste or liquid that can be applied to a surface by a brush or other tool; the most common oil used by artists is linseed, this can be thinned with turpentine spirit to produce a thinner and more fluid paint. The oil dries with a hard film, and the brightness of the colour is protected. Oil paints are usually opaque and traditionally used on canvas.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Watercolour

    A paint composed of water-soluble pigment, which has been ground in gum, usually gum Arabic. When made opaque with white, watercolour is generally called gouache. Colours are usually applied and spread with brushes and water, but other tools can also be used. Most watercolour painting is done on paper, but other absorbent grounds can also be employed. The term also denotes a work of art executed in this medium.

See in

  • Art Project