John Armstrong was a Sussex-born painter, muralist and designer, notably a member of Paul Nash’s Unit One group, a collection of artists that embraced the twin poles of abstraction and Surrealism. This exhibition on the Cornish coast is the first major survey of his work since a 1975 show at the Royal Academy, two years after his death.
He originally studied law, then in 1913–14 attended St John's Wood Art School. After wartime service in the Royal Field Artillery, he embarked on a career as a theatre designer in London. It was through his friendship with the actors Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton that he attracted a number of patrons for his painting. He joined the *Unit One group in 1933; his contribution to their exhibition was a series of highly textured semi-abstract paintings in tempera, a technique which he preferred for much of his life.
In the late 1930s he began working on the paintings for which he is best known, precisely delineated dream-like images influenced by Surrealism and French Neo-Romanticism. Pro Patria (1938, Imperial War Museum, London), showing a devastated town with a peeling political poster, was his comment on the Spanish Civil War. Armstrong's pacifist convictions were apparent in much of his later work, in images like The Storm (1951), in which clowns hack at each other with swords—an allegory of the futility of war.
Armstrong had been made an Associate member of the Royal Academy in 1966, a form of pre-selection for full Academy membership once a vacancy arose. Although Armstrong sadly did not live to become an RA, he produced a stunning body of work that took inspiration from both the English landscape and the major conflicts that took place during his lifetime, such as the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War.
John Armstrong: Dream & Reality. Penlee House Gallery and Museum, Penzance, till 18 November.
