John Piper (1903-1992) – Eye and Camera: Marble, Red, Black etc. – lying figure reversed

Description

John Egerton Christmas Piper CH (13 December 1903 – 28 June 1992) was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London.

Piper was an official war artist in World War II and his wartime depictions of bomb-damaged churches and landmarks, most notably those of Coventry Cathedral, made Piper a household name and led to his work being acquired by several public collections.

From 1950 Piper began working in stained glass in partnership with Patrick Reyntiens, whom he had met through John Betjeman. Their first completed commission, for the chapel at Oundle School, led to Basil Spence commissioning them to design the stained-glass baptistry window for the new Coventry Cathedral. They produced an abstract design that occupies the full height of the bowed baptistry, and comprises 195 panes, ranging from white to deep blue. Piper and Reyntiens went on to design large stained-glass windows for the chapel of Robinson College, Cambridge, and The Land Is Bright, a large window in the Washington National Cathedral, as well as windows for many smaller churches. Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, completed in 1967, also features an innovative stained glass lantern by Piper and Reyntiens.

Piper collaborated with many others, including the poets John Betjeman and Geoffrey Grigson on the Shell Guides, the potter Geoffrey Eastop and the artist Ben Nicholson. In his later years he produced many limited-edition prints and is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding printmakers of his generation.

Orme Levinson elaborates on Piper’s Eye and Camera series of prints in his seminal book Quality and Experiment: The Prints of John Piper, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1923-91:

‘The Eye and Camera prints are complex works, not yet appreciated for their approach to the figure and to modernism. The series is based on photographs of Piper’s wife Myfanwy, and presents the female figure in semi-nude poses which at first glance are suggestive of advertising imagery. It shows Piper at the forefront of Pop Art, taking up Pop Art’s concern with bright colours and images from popular culture……The Eye and Camera series reduces the figure to its essential features, almost to an abstraction. Although the individual works are thematically similar, there is no repetition between them. The prints transform a photographic portrait of a nude into a more universal statement about love and the body.’