Paul Nash

Paul Nash was born in London but brought up at Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire and the landscape of his youth resurfaces in his art. Having studied art at Chelsea Polytechnic and at Bolt Court, he attended the Slade School of Art. His growing reputation earned him an appointment as an official War Artist in both the First and Second world wars. His work often combined references to destruction with that of rebirth. Later, the sea was also to become a recurring motif in his work. Nash was a keen photographer and one of his first series of photographs were those taken on an Atlantic crossing in 1931 where he captures the ship's architecture against the swell of the sea and the flatness of the sky. He admired the camera's potential for triggering the subconscious. Nash became a leading figure in British art and he adopted a role as group organiser and polemicist for modernism in art. In 1933 Nash founded Unit One, an avant-garde group of eleven painters, sculptors and designers which aimed to be 'the expression of a truly contemporary spirit' articulated through abstraction and surrealism. Following Unit One's demise shortly afterwards, Nash moved more closely towards surrealism. However, by 1940 he had distanced himself from the movement.