Piper (John)

the last print in the second series of fifteen Contemporary Lithographs, a pioneering project to make original art available to the masses, either as affordable art for the home or for display in schools and other public institutions. It was the combined brainchild of the young manager of the Zwemmer Gallery, Robert Wellington, the passionate educationalist, Henry Morris, the artist, John Piper, in particular amongst a circle of young contemporary artists, mostly from the Royal College of Art, and the specialist printers, Oliver Simon and Harold Curwen, of the Curwen Press. Unlike the high quality reproduction prints that Wellington had hitherto been selling at Zwemmer’s as a way of disseminating mainly continental modern art, these prints were auto-lithographs, created by the artists’ own hands as original multiples. John Piper (1903-1992) studied at Richmond College of Art under Raymond Coxon, who prepared him for further training at the RCA. His childhood interest in antiquity and the countryside soon overcame his initial involvement in the abstract world of the Seven and Five society, and along with his engagement by John Betjeman to work on the Shell Guides he was editing, fostered a more illustrative and representational style, continued even through the diversity of his experimentation in collage, tapestry and stained-glass window designs. This particular print is essentially a pair to Nursery Frieze I – Seascape (Day) [Artmonsky 24], but is more usually to be found separately.

colour-printed auto-lithograph, 460 x 1220mm. (18 x 47 in), [Artmonsky 25], in good condition,