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7 4 1922 Born 3 October, in St John's Wood, London, one of six children of Royal Academy of Music professor Harold Craxton and Essie Faulkner, a violinist. 1929-1936 Attends various private schools. Exhibits at the Bloomsbury Gallery in London in 1932 with fellow pupils of Betteshanger School in Kent, whose art teacher, Elsie Barling, is a key early influence. 1937 Visits Paris and admires Picasso's newly painted Guernica. 1939 Draws models at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. 1940 Attends Westminster Art School and the Central School of Art in London. 1941 First solo show at the Swiss Cottage Café in London. e Craxton family home is destroyed by a bomb. Meets patron Peter Watson and painter Lucian Freud. 1942 Watson funds adjoining studios for Craxton and Freud in St John's Wood. Attends Goldsmiths College, London. 1943 Visits Pembrokeshire with Graham Sutherland, Freud and Watson. 1944 First solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London. Produces colour lithographs and ink decorations for the anthology Visionary Poems and Passages or e Poet's Eye selected by Geoffrey Grigson. 1945 Travels with Freud to the Scilly Isles. 1946 Returns to Paris. Watson arranges an exhibition at the Galerie Gasser in Zurich, where Craxton meets Lady Norton, wife of the British Ambassador to Greece, who takes him on to Athens. Arrives on Poros in June. Freud follows for an autumn and winter. Exhibits with the British Council in Athens. 1947 After a tour of the Cyclades and Dodecanese, Craxton visits Crete for the first time. Craxton and Freud exhibit Poros paintings at the London Gallery. 1948 Monograph by Geoffrey Grigson, John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings, is published by Horizon. 1949 Shows with the London Gallery and the British Council in Athens. 1951 Designs sets and costumes for a Covent Garden revival of the ballet Daphnis and Chloë, choreographed by Frederick Ashton. Exhibition of Greek pictures at the Leicester Galleries. 1952 Visits Chios. 1953 Visits Samos. 1954 Exhibition of Greek pictures at the Leicester Galleries. 1955-1956 Designs the cover for the book e Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis, translated and introduced by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Stays with Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor in the ancestral mansion of painter Niko Ghika on Hydra. Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. 1958 Designs the cover for Patrick Leigh Fermor's book Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. 1959 Spends Christmas with the Ghikas and Leigh Fermors on Hydra. 1960 Moves to a Venetian house on the harbour at Chania, Crete. 1961 Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. 1966 Sixth and last solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. Designs the cover for Patrick Leigh Fermor's book Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. 1967 Retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Exiled from Greece after a military coup. 1971 Exhibition at Hamet Gallery, London. 1972 Exhibition at the University of Stirling, which commissions Craxton to design and execute a Greek-inspired tapestry with Dovecot Weavers. B I O G R A P H Y

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