CHRISTOPHER WOOD

 

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture by Gautam Shah

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Christopher Wood (1901-1930) was a British painter. He trained as a painter, From 1921, at the Académie Julian in Paris. He travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924. Wood committed suicide, at the age 29. Most of Wood's greatest works are from 1929 and 1930 (just before he committed suicide).

Wood was ‘known for his idiosyncratic paintings depicting the region around St. Ives’. He painted the openness of the sea coast (Cornwall, Brittany) that was full of pleasure. He was forced to use cheap oil paints and often house paints, and cheap canvas.

Wood extensively used awkward perspectives and distorted scale to create naivety in his art. Wood’s use of colour is muted for his landscape art of coastal scenes, but brilliant in portraits. He used simple brush strokes, minimal details to paint people or objects.

Wood saw the world from his own sensuality and not for confirmation from anyone. He painted a zebra surreally standing on the roof terrace of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye near Paris. This was also supposed to be a cover for a book by Irish poet Paul Muldoon, but rejected by the publisher.