John TunnardTol Pedn 1942

Like a number of British artists, Tunnard was attracted to aspects of Surrealism in the late 1930s while retaining his independence. He exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Surrealist-orientated gallery in London in 1939 before moving to Cornwall during the war. There he served as a coastguard. Tol-Pedn, Penwith, near to Tunnard’s home on the Lizard, is the most southerly point of the British mainland. Its concrete landmarks appear to have stimulated Tunnard’s abstraction of the landscape.