Christopher "Kit" Wood (1901-1930) died a young
but prolific painter. He studied architecture briefly at Liverpool University but turned
to the study of painting, working in Paris at the Academic Julian and the Grande
Chaumiere. He was encouraged by Augustus John amongst others, and during his lifetime
executed commissions for ballet for Diaghilev and Constant Lambert (Romeo and Juliet). He
met Picasso early on his career and was a close friend of Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob. He
first exhibited in London in 1924, and in 1925 he exhibited with Paul Nash at the Redfern
Gallery in London. In 1926, he met Ben and Winifred Nicholson, with whom he became close
friends. He later worked with them sporadically in Cornwall and Cumbria, and discovered
the naive painter Alfred Wallis with Ben Nicholson in 1928. He was widely influenced by
the many trends in European contemporary art at the time, but developed his own unique
naive style, accentuated by strong colours and vigourous representations of boats,
seascapes, landscapes and people. He was a particularly fine draughtsman, working quickly
in pencil and crayon. Kit Wood sadly came under the influence of opium and other drugs,
and he died at the age of 29 in a confused state, falling under a train at Salisbury
station. The Royal Academy staged a large retrospective of his work in 1938, and he is
widely represented in many public collections in UK, USA and Europe.
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