John Craxton

John Craxton (born 1922-2009 in London, UK) first became known for his dreamy, symbolic images painted when he was associated with the Neo-Romantic movement in England, which sought to combine the poetic traditions of English landscape with the innovations of Modernism. After sharing a studio with Lucian Freud and working with Graham Sutherland in the early 1940s, he visited Greece in 1946 and fell in love with the country. He settled in Crete in 1960 and started making pictures that embody a Mediterranean view of life such as the Greek scene included in the exhibition. Craxton’s experience of Greece made him realise that his main interest in landscape was its human associations. Figures such as shepherds and poets, as well as farms, houses and animals, feature regularly in these works. Of his desire to live in Greece, Craxton explained: "I wanted to put myself in an alien land and see if my talent would stand it." The self-portrait by Craxton also included in the exhibition was made on an early trip to Greece around the time that he travelled there with Lucian Freud [who painted Portrait of a Man (John Craxton) in the same year].