General Editor: Michael Tooby

This series explores the life and work of major artists associated with St Ives.

The achievement of Christopher Wood has often been overshadowed by the legend that grew up around his Bohemian lifestyle and his dramatic suicide at the age of twenty-nine. Incresingly, however, critics have come to see his work, particularly the output of the final two years of his life, as having a pivotal role in the development of modernism in Britain. Pursuing a path between the naturalism of the 1920s and the abstraction of the 1930s, his talent won the admiration of such modernist giants as Picasso and Cocteau and secured his status as among the most important painters of his generation.

The author explores the life and art of Wood in detail, and examines the growth of a glamorous narrative of tragic genius that developed during the decades following his death. The integrity of Wood's endeavour, the combination of self-confidence and uncertainty, of accomplishment and awkwardness, gives his paintings a human quality that continues to be admired today.

80pp; 60 illustrations (40 colour)