Paul Nash

Paul Nash (London, May 11, 1889 - Dorset, July 11, 1946) was an English painter, famous for his war paintings and landscapes, some of which show the influence of the surrealists and the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico.

Born in London on 11 May 1889, he studied at Chelsea Polytechnic, London County Council School and the Slade School of Art. In 1912 he exhibited at the Carfax Gallery. He cemented his reputation after his service during the First World War. In the interwar period he was linked to the world of the avant-garde, exhibiting with the Surrealists in London (1936) and Paris (1938). Although very ill, during the Second World War he returned to producing important works as a war chronicler, before his death on July 11, 1946 in Boscombe, Hampshire.

In the early part of his career, Nash adopted a conservative style influenced mainly by the English landscape tradition. During World War I his work concentrated on the distorted representation of the landscape of the war front, which he made in numerous large paintings.

His most creative work came in the late 1920s. In "Equivalents for the megaliths" (1935, Tate Gallery, London), for example, he transformed prehistoric Wiltshire megaliths into mysterious geometric shapes, imprinting them with a surreal quality that brings him closer to the work of De Chirico.

Nash's achievement was to combine the English landscape tradition with European avant-garde movements. He occupies a prominent place, being one of the founders of the avant-garde group Unit One in 1933, in which he collaborated with the likes of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.