Nevinson: 'Bad Boy Modernist'

Art and the First World War: Global to Local is a series of public talks co-hosted by Leeds Art Gallery, Legacies of War and the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, to be held at Leeds Art Gallery, The Headrow, Leeds City Centre.

In Nevinson: 'Bad Boy Modernist', speaker Dr Sue Malvern focuses on the work of artist CRW Nevinson.

Nevinson produced some of the most recognised images of the First World War which helped define how the War was seen in artistic terms. Later, in 1936, the Star newspaper called Nevinson ‘eternally the bad boy…among the artists’. From 1930 Nevinson exhibited a series of allegories, sometimes called his ‘problem pictures’. These became increasingly political as the threat of fascism became more overt. In the same period there was renewed interest in his war paintings from the First World War. Sue Malvern unpicks the contradictions in Nevinson’s politics and practice beginning with his well-known war works 1914-18 and considers their reputation in the 30s and beyond.

Dr Sue Malvern lectures in history of art at the University of Reading. She is the author of 'Modern Art, Britain, and the Great War. Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance' (Yale University Press, 2004) which was a finalist for the 2006 Historians of British Art Book Prize. Her research interests include art and war in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially public monuments and memorials, and she is part of the 'War, Gender and Visual Culture Network'.

See  for details regarding future talks in this series.

For more information on Legacies of War, contact Dr Claudia Sternberg.