John Tunnard (1900-1971) was a British artist associated with the Surrealist and Neo-Romanticist movements. He began his career in textile design and started painting in 1929. In the early 1930s he moved to Cornwall where he began to paint abstract compositions influenced by the Surrealism of Joan Miró and Paul Klee. This watercolour painting evokes a network of imaginary mechanical constructions. Its emphasis on pattern and texture suggests both Tunnard’s experience with textiles and his interest in civil engineering. The artist’s depiction of interdependent floating forms is redolent of the ‘mobiles’ designed by Surrealist sculptor Alexander Calder, whose work Tunnard may have encountered through his friend the British artist Julian Trevelyan.
