BRITISH ABSTRACTION
‘It is impossible for me to make a painting that has no reference to the very powerful landscape in which I live”
-Peter Lanyon, 1963.
Bellmans sale of Modern & Contemporary Art on 19th November includes a notable selection of Abstract works by Peter Lanyon, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and John Hoyland.
‘White Square, New Jersey’ was painted during the seven months in 1962 that Lanyon spent at Bois d'Arc, the Frenchtown home of art collector, Stanley Seeger who had commissioned him to paint a mural. Seeger had been instrumental in Lanyon's career in the United States, having introduced him to Catherine Viviano who staged his first solo New York show at her gallery on East 57th Street in 1957. It was at this time that Lanyon met Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko, the latter's work providing particular inspiration.
Born in St. Ives, Lanyon strived throughout his career to depict the rugged and dramatic landscape of the Cornish coast. Much of his later work deals with the artist's reaction to certain environments, in particular the occasionally indeterminate border between sea, sky and land. It is a concept that also fascinated L.S. Lowry whose coastal subjects often explored the blurring or even disappearance of the horizon. When confronted with the elements at their most powerful Lanyon '...realises he is seeing an image of his own existence.' (Chris Stephens, Peter Lanyon - At the Edge of Landscape, London, 2000, p.152). Work from this period tends to have softer tones, reflecting the more lyrical and ethereal subject matter, qualities clearly evident in ‘Cliff Grass.’
Lanyon had served in the RAF during WWII as a flight mechanic; in his quest to explore landscape from new perspectives, he took up gliding in 1959 and tragically died following a crash landing near Honiton, Devon in 1964.
With its dominant fields of colour linked by a pair of lines, ‘Pink’ relates to a body of work by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, executed in the mid-1950s, known as the 'Geoff and Scruffy' series; the inspiration apparently being Geoffrey Tribe and his enormous mongrel stray dog, Scruffy. Barns-Graham denied this, stating '...my subject was nothing to do with Geoff and Scruffy, the main shape came from drawings done in the war, of men painting buoys, some were green, red, black or white. The shape got simplified. The half-moon was the beach shape cut by the sea.'
Barns-Graham specialist Lynne Green goes on to explain,'...working with this formal theme during the 1950s...the reduction of both the elements and the palette creates a strong, cogent structure, the weight and presence of which equals the simple solidity of sculpture by Robert Adams (Lynne Green, W Barns-Graham - A Studio Life, Lund Humphries, 2001, pp.143-145)
Sheffield-born John Hoyland’s visit to New York in 1964 proved to be a turning point in his career. He was shown around by critic Clement Greenberg who exposed him to the work of Hans Hoffman and Morris Louis which encouraged him to explore the use of bold, geometric fields of colour with an emphasis on the physical surface of the medium.
'A colour is used as the key for a painting or series of paintings. Red or green for example, can satisfy two polarities of some kind or an antithesis, like black and white ... Colour is used instinctively, not intellectually. But once an instinctive choice is made, the colour tends to be played through as a long sequence. Where to put colour is the crucial question and decision, and always the problem ... The importance of process, the way the paint is put on, is constant. I cannot accept either the wholly conceptual or purely fortuitous...The painting must come to life in its own way, as a natural process'.
-John Hoyland quoted in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, John Hoyland paintings 1960-67, London, Whitechapel Gallery, 1967, pp. 13-14
Auction Details
- Sale: Modern & Contemporary Art, Wednesday 19 November
- Auctioneer: Bellmans, Sussex
- Lots: 801, 802, 804, 805
- Estimate: £10,000 - £15,000, £15,000 - £20,000, £7,000 - £10,000, £3,000 - £5,000, respectively
View the full catalogue and register to bid online here.
