Christopher Wood is one of the best loved artists of the Modern British period and remains highly sought after by collectors. His artistic output was small but influential, and his dramatic life story, culminating in his tragic early death in 1930, engendered a personality cult which continues to enthral historians and collectors to this day.
Born in Knowsley, Liverpool, Wood moved to Paris after briefly studying architecture. In 1921 he attended the Académie Julian, a school which produced many successful artists and was as effective at stimulating networks as it was at nurturing artistic talent; the handsome young Wood, whose artwork was becoming admired for its charming naivety, excelled in both of these areas. He quickly gained the attention and patronage of Chilean diplomat Antonio de Gandarillas. Gandarillas provided crucial financial support, and introduced Wood to Picasso and Jean Cocteau, though also to the use of opium, which was to play a tragic role in his later life.
It was in the mid-1920s, however, that Wood truly began to make his mark. Traditionally associated with boundlessness, escapism and freedom from society’s rules, some have identified covert references to Wood’s sexuality in his work; Wood was openly bi-sexual and indeed was co-habiting with Gandarillas at this time.
The late 1920s saw Wood continue to establish himself - especially in London - exhibiting as a member of the London Group in 1926 and the Seven and Five Society between 1926-30. Through this he forged an important friendship with Ben and Winifred Nicholson, exhibiting with the couple at the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1927. Both artists had a considerable impact on Wood’s art, and his mature artistic style was ultimately cemented during a trip with Ben Nicholson to St Ives. Here, the pair met a local artist called Alfred Wallis. The freeness and gentle naivety of Wallis’ self-taught ‘primitive’ approach was the final piece in the eclectic puzzle of Wood’s own visual language.
The modernism absorbed during his Parisian years, the romanticism of the English artistic tradition to which he was both drawn and simultaneously sought to circumvent, and the child-like quality of the work of ‘Outsider’ figures like Alfred Wallis combined to set his work apart from his peers. As such, Wood’s art is considered to represent an important and unique ‘bridge’ between England and the Continent at that time – subsumed by neither one style nor the other.
Wood died prematurely and tragically; throwing himself under a train in 1930 at the age of 29, presumed to be struggling with opium withdrawal symptoms. His career was cut short; capping the number of artworks produced and increasing the scarcity and demand to this day.
