Christopher Wood: Sophisticated Primitive
[ Exhibition )
Christopher Wood, China Dogs in a St. Ives Window, 1926, Gouache on panel, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (Acquired by Pallant House Gallery in 2017 with thanks to support from Art Fund (with a contribution from The Wolfson Foundation), the Arts Council England/Victoria & Albert Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of Pallant House Gallery Acquisition Fund and generous donors)
How did Christopher Wood combine a sophisticated technique with a primitive style?
Dearest mother, you ask me what I am going to do: I have decided to try and be the greatest painter that has ever lived.
Christopher Wood, in a letter to his mother.
What the press said
The strange and the familiar, the wild and the mundane meet with a lyrical, sometimes almost rapturous intensity. A rhythmic energy pulses through these pictures.
The Times
…an interesting and even moving survey of an avant-garde painter who adopted a self-consciously innocent and “primitive” style before his tragically young death in 1930, aged just 29.
The Guardian Guide
This exhibition was made possible by a number of generous organisations and individuals
