Nash, Paul (1889–1946)

English painter. He was an official war artist in World Wars I and II. In the 1930s he was one of a group of artists promoting avant‐garde style, and was deeply influenced by surrealism. Two works which illustrate the visionary quality of his paintings are Totes Meer/Dead Sea (1940–41; Tate Gallery, London) and Solstice of the Sunflower (1945; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa). ‘Structural purpose’ was an aim which led him into many forms of design, for textiles, ceramics, the stage and the book, but the surrealist trend of the 1930s and the exhibition of 1936 brought out an imaginative and poetic feeling already apparent in his oils and watercolours.

Nash was born in London. In his pictures of World War I, such as The Menin Road (Imperial War Museum), he created strange patterns out of the scorched landscape of the Western Front. During World War II he was appointed official war artist to the Air Ministry.