NASH, PAUL

born May 11, 1889, London, Eng. died July 11, 1946, Boscombe, Hampshire painter, printmaker, illustrator, and photographer, who was appointed (1917 and 1940) an official war artist by the British government in both World Wars I and II. Nash studied at the Slade School, London. In 1914 he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, and his 1918 exhibition of paintings portrayed, in an abstract, Cubist-influenced style, shattered war landscapes such as The Menin Road (1918). There followed seascapes and landscapes of distinguished design and cool, vibrating colours. He was largely responsible in 1933 for organizing Unit One, a group of British artists including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, who stressed the formal instead of the mimetic aspects of art. In the 1930s Nash's paintings developed freer design and richer colour, together with a symbolic vision influenced by Surrealism. One of his best-known paintings of World War II was Totes Meer (194041; Dead Sea). His later paintings reveal his imaginative poetic symbolism.