John Piper 1903-1992

John Piper (1903–1992) was an important and distinctive figure in modern British art in a long career that spanned seven decades, from the 1920s through to the 1980s. Throughout this time he was constantly evolving and changing and refining the nature of his style, and the trajectory he followed was a singular and interesting one. 

John Piper 1903-1992 presented an exhibition of  works that brought together paintings and watercolours from all periods of his career, and included an abstract and a figurative painting from the 1930s, a group of works made during the war, and some very fine examples of Piper’s skill as a printmaker with a set of hand-coloured Brighton aquatints and his nursery prints.

The exhibition catalogue was written by the leading Piper scholar, David Fraser Jenkins, who has curated the major appraisals of Piper’s art, including the lifetime retrospective exhibition held at the Tate Gallery in 1983 and  exhibitions devoted to Piper’s work of the 1930s and 1940s held at the Imperial War Museum and Dulwich Picture Gallery respectively.