John Piper

John Piper's (1903-1992) career spanned over sixty years and encompassed a huge range of artistic media including print making, painting, drawing, book illustration, photography, stained glass windows, fabric design, murals, stage sets and costume design. He is most readily associated with his prints and paintings of the romantic heritage of Britain. Piper explored and painted rural Britain throughout his life (a passion that started with bicycle adventures in his native Surrey as a boy) fascinated by vernacular, ecclesiastical and architecture in general. In his printmaking he frequently took as his subject matter abbeys and churches, houses, castles and cottages, piers, beaches and harbours. His style is a unique mix of quintessential Englishness (in the tradition of Gilpin and Turner) with a commitment to the modern and abstract movements that were emerging as he left art school. His style is dramatic and romantic, combining rich passages of colour, calligraphic line and experimental textures with a dazzling freedom of expression.

Piper, the son of a solicitor, was born in Epsom in 1903. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art, followed by the Royal College of Art in London (1926-28). From 1928 to 1933 he wrote art criticism for the Listener and the Nation, and he was among the first to recognise such contemporaries as William Coldstream, Ivon Hitchens, Victor Pasmore and Ceri Richards.During the 1930s Piper experimented with abstraction, this interest was heightened by trips to Paris (where he met Jean Helion) and the influence of Ben Nicholson. He founded Axis magazine with his second wife Myfanwy Evans, the magazine set out to promote abstract art. Piper's interest in architecture was revived by his friendship with John Betejeman and his commission to write Oxon: the Shell guide to Oxfordshire. This retreat from modernism was a compromise between abstraction and a reinterpretation of certain native traditions.

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