| Paul Nash attended Bolt Court Commercial Art School and The Slade School of Fine Art in 1910 before going on to produce striking designs for Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Nash was important because is important because he helped introduce the British art establishment and public to the excitements and potentials of European Modernism, and because he helped to create the Surrealist movement in Britain.
Nash's travels between the wars took him to Paris and to Italy. Here he encountered the avant-garde works of Matisse and Picasso, and of Georgio de Chirico who would become a leading inspiration for the Surrealist. In a metaphorical sense Nash travelled towards the same ground as these artists: away, that is, from the representational characteristic of his early work, via the abstract and towards the symbolic as evidenced in his later work.
Time and again Nash sought to find and depict special 'places' as he called them. The sites he found to portray were often of recognized importance, like the prehistoric Wittenham Clumps or the Avebury Stone Circles; but Nash designated these as special 'places' not for their historical significance. As he wrote:
'there are places
whose relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment, which cannot be analysed'.
Nash welcomed what he saw as Surrealism's 'release of the dream', but he did so because, even in his early more representational work, he was interested in that which lay below the surface, or beyond the apparent. When he was young he was attracted to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to Blake and to Samuel Palmer. In particular he identified with the almost mystical engagement and love of the English landscape as depicted by Palmer. What he saw attempted by Palmer was what he always wanted to achieve in his own work: to get to that which lay below or beyond the ordinary, to a portrayal of that which is sometimes designated the genius loci, or the 'spirit' of a place
Artist Paul attended Bolt Court Commercial Art School and The Slade School of Fine Art in 1910 before going on to produce striking designs for Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. Nash was important because is important because he helped introduce the British art establishment and public to the excitements and potentials of European Modernism, and because he helped to create the Surrealist movement in Britain.
Nash's travels between the wars took him to Paris and to Italy. Here he encountered the avant-garde works of Matisse and Picasso, and of Georgio de Chirico who would become a leading inspiration for the Surrealist. In a metaphorical sense Nash travelled towards the same ground as these artists: away, that is, from the representational characteristic of his early work, via the abstract and towards the symbolic as evidenced in his later work.
Time and again Nash sought to find and depict special 'places' as he called them. The sites he found to portray were often of recognized importance, like the prehistoric Wittenham Clumps or the Avebury Stone Circles; but Nash designated these as special 'places' not for their historical significance. As he wrote:
'there are places
whose relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment, which cannot be analysed'.
Nash welcomed what he saw as Surrealism's 'release of the dream', but he did so because, even in his early more representational work, he was interested in that which lay below the surface, or beyond the apparent. When he was young he was attracted to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to Blake and to Samuel Palmer. In particular he identified with the almost mystical engagement and love of the English landscape as depicted by Palmer. What he saw attempted by Palmer was what he always wanted to achieve in his own work: to get to that which lay below or beyond the ordinary, to a portrayal of that which is sometimes designated the genius loci, or the 'spirit' of a place. |
