John Craxton

by Ian Collins with an Introduction by David Attenborough

Artist: John Craxton
Published: May 2011
Publisher: Lund Humphries, London
Edition: -
Format: Hardback
Height: 27cm
Pages: 184
Illustrations: Illustrated throughout in colour

£35.00

Add to basket

Artists Bio

John Craxton

The authors Ian Collins and Sir David Attenborough will be giving a talk followed by a booksigning on Thursday 29th September at 6pm. View more details here (This event has now sold out)

This is the first full-scale monograph on British artist John Craxton (1922-2009), a key figure in post-war painting. This book was authorised by John Craxton before his death in 2009 and the author Ian Collins had many conversations with the artist during his final years.

Ian Collins's engaging text is informed by his many conversations with the artist, who was also a celebrated wit and story-teller, and is supported by more than 200 reproductions of life-affirming paintings and drawings.

This new John Craxton book will be welcomed by art historians, collectors, curators and all those with an interest in the history of modern British art.

(b London, 3 Oct 1922). English painter. Rejected from military service in 1941, he shared a studio in London with Lucian Freud, provided by their patron and friend Peter Watson, a figure of immense importance to Craxton’s early development. Through Watson he met with other artists associated with NEO-ROMANTICISM and like many of his generation he fell heavily under the influence of Graham Sutherland and Samuel Palmer, as seen in Poet in a Landscape (1941; London, Christopher Hull Gal.). By 1943, in such works as Welsh Estuary Foreshore (Edinburgh, N.G. Mod. A.), a marked departure could be recognized. Its reference to the work of Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró placed him in a more European context. After World War II he travelled around the Mediterranean, finally settling in Crete in 1960, where he continued to develop his Romantic pastoral themes. The influence of William Blake gave way to that of Cubism, and he also became interested in Byzantine art. His paintings of Cretan life, such as Vokos II (1984; London, Christopher Hull Gal., see exh. cat., no. 3), still reveal a humanist if not pantheist philosophy.