"Peter Lanyon was one of the most exciting and original landscape painters of the 20th Century. The only native-born Cornishman of the St Ives artists, Lanyon's representation of the land he grew up in was complex and passionate: for him it was part social history, part myth, part aesthetic. This book -- the first major assessment of Lanyon's work -- explores how the artist's words and paintings interrogate the very notion of how landscape is perceived and conceived. It tells of Lanyon's singular place within the 20th century's major art movements -- abstraction and the post-war British figurative tradition -- alongside his strong belief in employing landscape and place to explore questions of personal identity. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.