Herbert Read Biography Quotes 34 Report mistakes

Early life and education
Herbert Read was born in North Yorkshire in 1893 and grew up in a rural setting that left a lasting imprint on his imagination. The early death of his father forced the family into modest circumstances, and he developed a love of books and the natural world while working and studying. He attended the University of Leeds, where he read widely in literature and criticism. The mixture of pastoral memory and intellectual ambition formed the ground from which his poetry and aesthetics would grow.

War, poetry, and the making of a critic
When the First World War broke out, Read enlisted in a Yorkshire regiment and served on the Western Front. The experience shaped his outlook permanently. He emerged with decorations for bravery, but also with a determination to address violence, authority, and the role of the artist in society. His early poetry, including the collection Naked Warriors, belongs to the tradition of British war writing yet is marked by a spare modernist edge. After demobilization he wrote criticism and essays with increasing assurance, contributing to journals and building a reputation that brought him into contact with important editors and writers such as T. S. Eliot, whose Criterion offered a forum for his literary and aesthetic ideas.

Museum work and the turn to modern art
In the 1920s Read worked in London museums, an apprenticeship that sharpened his connoisseurship and historical range. From this base he developed the clear, economical prose that made books like English Prose Style and The Meaning of Art widely read introductions to the subject. He began to champion contemporary artists well before they were secure in public taste. In Britain he promoted Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth as sculptors of international significance, and he argued for the abstract and constructivist vision associated with figures like Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo. His advocacy of Paul Nash and later Graham Sutherland helped define a modern English landscape sensibility that was both visionary and disciplined.

Networks, movements, and institutions
Read moved fluidly between artists, editors, and patrons, a talent that allowed him to shape the modern British art scene. He supported the Unit One group, editing the volume that announced their aims and bringing together painters, sculptors, and architects under a single modernist banner. He wrote and spoke for the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, working alongside Roland Penrose and the young poet David Gascoyne; the presence of Andre Breton and Salvador Dali made the event a landmark, and Read helped mediate the encounter between British audiences and continental avant-gardes. After the Second World War he co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London with Roland Penrose and Peter Watson, envisioning a home for experimental art, design, and debate. The ICA became a crucible for younger artists and curators, and its subsequent leadership, including figures such as Dorothy Morland, built on the institutional architecture he helped create.

Anarchism, education, and social philosophy
Politically, Read identified with a humane, decentralized anarchism influenced by writers like Peter Kropotkin. He set out this position in essays and books, notably Poetry and Anarchism, arguing that a free society would be sustained by creative individuals and by the cultivation of form in life as well as art. His most sustained practical program came through education. In Education Through Art he contended that aesthetic experience is foundational to personal development and to democratic culture, and he advised teachers and policymakers accordingly. His ideas influenced art education in Britain and abroad, and brought him into conversation with allied thinkers and writers, including George Woodcock and Alex Comfort within the libertarian tradition.

Fiction, criticism, and public voice
Alongside poetry and criticism, Read wrote the imaginative novel The Green Child, a fable-like work that condenses his lifelong preoccupations with order, myth, and individual freedom. As a critic he added to his tally with Art Now, Art and Society, and later Icon and Idea, refining a vocabulary that could explain both formal experiment and ethical commitment. He served as an editor and adviser in publishing, working with series that introduced modern art and design to general readers, and he joined the editorial leadership of influential periodicals such as The Burlington Magazine during the 1930s. His public standing was consolidated by radio talks, lectures, and exhibitions, where he could be found explaining the work of Moore, Hepworth, and Nicholson to broader audiences while engaging international currents from Piet Mondrian to the Surrealists.

Honours, later years, and family
Recognition followed the breadth of his activity. He was knighted for services to literature, a distinction that sat alongside the unconventionality of his political commitments and taste. He continued to publish into the 1950s and 1960s, producing works such as To Hell with Culture that renewed his critique of cultural bureaucracy. His domestic life connected him to the arts through his children: the filmmaker John Read became known for documentaries on artists, and the younger generation included the novelist Piers Paul Read and the art historian Benedict Read, who carried forward the family engagement with culture. Friends and colleagues from different circles remained close: Roland Penrose at the ICA, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth from the studios of modern sculpture, and younger critics and poets who sought his counsel.

Death and legacy
Herbert Read died in 1968 in North Yorkshire, not far from the landscape of his beginnings. His reputation rests on a rare combination of roles: war poet, lucid critic, anarchist theorist, museum professional, and institution-builder. He helped to install modern art at the center of British cultural life, persuading the public that tradition and experiment need not be enemies. Through his advocacy of artists such as Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, and Naum Gabo, his partnership with figures like Roland Penrose and Peter Watson, and his influence on education, he altered the conditions under which art was made, taught, and received. His prose continues to guide readers, his institutional initiatives endure in the ICA, and his humane libertarianism remains a touchstone for those who link artistic freedom with social renewal.

Our collection contains 34 quotes who is written by Herbert, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Justice - Meaning of Life - Deep.