Stage design for Diaghilev’s ballet, Romeo and Juliet (Scene Two), 1925

About the artist

Born 1901 – Died 1930

Christopher ‘Kit’ Wood was born in Knowsley, near Liverpool. Following an injury while playing football, Wood contracted a blood disease and was nursed at home by his mother, who encouraged him to take up watercolour painting. Although he had no formal training, he went to Paris in 1921 with the ambition of becoming ‘the greatest painter that ever lived.’ Soon establishing himself as a prominent and popular figure among the artistic and social circles of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde, he mingled with aristocrats and won the admiration of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. During these years, he also travelled to Europe and North Africa with José Antonio de Gandarillas, a diplomat at the Chilean embassy in Paris.