R160,000
John Egerton Piper (English 1903 - 1992) ADDERBURY
mixed media on paper
signed, inscribed with the title and '25 vi 73'
58 by 76cm; 81 by 99 by 4cm including framing
A pioneer of Modern Art, John Piper is recognised as one of the significant British artists of the 20th century. He is renowned for romantic paintings of the English landscape, but his depiction of churches and monuments are most powerful.
Piper’s interest in architecture drew the attention of Kenneth Clarke and he was recruited to join the “Recording Britain” project in 1939. The project’s aims were twofold: to record British heritage in watercolour and to capture the devastating effects of the war on this heritage. Piper's involvement with the project in turn led on to commissions from the “War Artists Advisory Committee”. Selected as an official war artist, he was to portray the loss and aftermath of bombings.
Drawing on the British Romantic tradition, Piper created emotional representations of the wartime atmosphere, evoking simultaneously a sense of place, belonging, loss and nostalgia – a sombre reflection of those times. He used a range of processes to create his expressive and energetic landscapes, often exaggerating the formal qualities of line, texture and colour. This can be seen in the artist’s use of leading line and mark-making to amplify the moody atmosphere of the Adderbury church scene in lot 395. Piper's experience as a war artist cemented his commitment to the British landscape as his primary subject, one which sustained him for the remainder of his career.
Piper’s oeuvre provides an important view of mid-century England. His work not only naturalistically depicts the structures and landscape of his subjects but uses the language of abstraction to develop an internal relationship to the setting, instilling a sense of tone and atmosphere into his paintings.
-AF
Nead, L. (2017). How John Piper found beauty in bombed buildings, Accessed 2 September 2021 https://artuk.org/discover/stories/how-john-piper-found-beauty-in-bombed-buildings
Tate (2021). Exhibition Guide: John Piper, Accessed 2 September 2021
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/john-piper/exhibition-guide
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