Artist, actor, poet, jazz musician and teacher, born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, who attended Hereford School of Art, leaving 1951. After National Service in the Royal Army Education Corps, he became an art master at Leominster, then taught at schools in London and at Bradford College of Art, Leeds Polytechnic and as head of fine arts at Liverpool Polytechnic. While developing a reputation as a painter, moving from conventional depiction to semi-representational work, Nuttall used the theatre as another didactic medium. In 1966, with Mark Long and others, he founded the People Show, a company touring often largely improvised works to small theatres and unconventional venues which by 1980 had traversed Britain, the continent and America with over 80 productions.
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Nuttall, one of the first British creators of the “happening”, outlined his People Show experiences in Performance Art, 1979. Previously, he had published My Own Mag, 1964–7. His other writings included the early Beat-influenced Poems 1962–9 and Bomb Culture, both 1970; the novel Snipe’s Sister, 1975; a book about the North Country comedian Frank Randle, King Twist, 1978; Art and the Degradation of Awareness, 2000, in which he argued that culture had bankrupted itself by rejecting truth and meaning in favour of Pop culture and money; and Selected Poems, 2003. In 1965 he appeared in Michael Horovitz’s World Poetry Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, his performance requiring him to appear in a bath and run naked across the stage covered in paint. Nuttall’s first film appearance was in 1966, one of a parade of bare backsides in Yoko Ono’s Film No 4; other film parts including a key role in Peter Greenaway’s 1993 Baby of Mâcon; and there were television roles, such as Friar Tuck in the 1991 production Robin Hood. The big, garrulous, Dionysian Nuttall died in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, where at the Hen and Chicks he weekly played cornet and sang with his own jazz band. Brecknock Museum & Art Gallery, Brecon, organised The Art of Jeff Nuttall in 2004, shortly after he died.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
