John Craxton

John Craxton ( born October 3, 1922 in London, † November 17, 2009 ) was an English painter.

Life

The son of composer and pianist Harold Craxton and brother of oboist Janet Craxton began in 1939 to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere, which was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. He then studied in London at the Westminster Art School and at Goldsmiths College, where he met the same age painter Lucian Freud and the older Graham Sutherland, who painted him in 1943-44 in Pembrokeshire.

In 1944, Craxton his first major solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries and awarded the contract to illustrtation compiled by Geoffrey Grigson collection of poetry, The Poet's Eye, for which he created 16 lithographs. After the war, he traveled to Paris ( where he met Pablo Picasso ) and to Switzerland and worked 1946-47 with Freud on Poros in Greece.

In 1951, Frederick Ashton's commissioned for his choreography of the ballet Daphnis and Chloë at the Covent Garden Opera ( with Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes ) to design the costumes and sets. For a performance of the Royal Ballet 's 100th birthday Ashton 2004, he reconstructed the meantime verlorengangenen designs from memory. Another costume and stage set he designed for a performance of Igor Stravinsky's Apollo at the Royal Opera House in 1968.

Following a joint exhibition with Freud in E. L. T. Mesens ' London Gallery Craxton had in the 1950s and 1960s numerous solo exhibitions, including six in the Leicester Galleries and a retrospective in 1967 at the Whitechapel Gallery. Since 1960 he lived in Chania, Crete, but returned regularly to the house of his family back to London. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1993.

Primarily Craxton emerged as a landscape and portrait painter. Stylistically, he showed himself as well as influenced by the contemporary cubism, his older friend Sutherland and the Greek painter Nicolas Ghika of the Byzantine painting and landscape painting of the 19th century. Craxtons works can be found in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Britten -Pears Foundation in Aldeburgh and the Royal Academy of Arts, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery in London.