Piper, John

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Piper, John (1903–92) English painter. His early abstract phase gave way to a commitment to neo-Romanticism in the 1940s. As an official war artist (1940–42) during World War II, Piper produced striking paintings of bomb-damaged buildings. Queen Elizabeth II commissioned him to paint Windsor Castle (1941–42). Piper also designed the stage sets for Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice (1973) and the stained glass windows in Coventry Cathedral.

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