British
Painter of architecture, landscapes, flowers and abstracts in oils, watercolours and gouache; draughtsman, collagist, printmaker; stained glass, textile and theatrical designer; illustrator, maker of reliefs and constructions, photographer and writer. Born in Epsom, he worked as an articled clerk, 1921-6, before studying under Coxon at Richmond School of Art in 1926, and at the RCA 1927-9, where he studied painting under Martin Kestleman and stained glass under Francis Spear. In 1927 he met Braque and Henry Moore and in 1929 married Eileen Holding.

He exhibited at the London Group from 1931, wrote criticism for the New Statesman and The Listener from 1933, and in 1934 began to make abstract constructions, becoming a member, and subsequently secretary of the Seven and Five Society. In 1934 he met Myfanwy Evans, whom he married in 1937, and worked with her on the magazine Axis. A friend of Ivon Hitchens, John Betjeman, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious and Frances Hodgkins, in 1940 he worked on the Recording Britian scheme and painted scenes of war damaged churches for the WAAC, becoming an Official War Artist in 1944.

His commissions in the 1940s included a series of works of Renshaw Hall for Sir Osbert Sitwell and of Windsor Castle for HM The Queen. He continued to work widely on commissions and increasingly on stained glass design including windows for Coventry Cathedral, 1957-61, and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, 1963-7.

He exhibited extensively, holding solo exhibitions from c.1933 in many leading London galleries and his work is represented widely in public collections including the Tate Gallery. His stage designs were commissioned for many major productions, e.g. Benjamin Britten's operas Albert Herring, 1947; and Death in Venice, 1973. Amongst his publications is British Romantic Artists, Collins, 1942. A trustee of the Tate Gallery, 1946-61 and 1968-74, and a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission, 1960-77, he was awarded the Companion of Honour in 1972.

Initially a landscape artist, he turned to abstraction in 1934 but by 1936 had returned to figurative painting, in particular topographical subjects. He developed a romantic idiosyncratic style which combined a range of rich, strongly contrasted passages of colour, rapidly drawn sharp lines and varied textures. In later works the detail is more abbreviated and the colour emotional and intense.

LIT:
Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1983
Piper's Places, Richard Ingrams and John Piper, Chatto and Windus, London, 1983
John Piper. The Complete Graphic Works, Orde Levinson, Faber and Faber, 1987