Description
λ ALAN REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1926-2014), STRUCTURE: RED AND GREEN λ ALAN REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1926-2014)STRUCTURE: RED AND GREENOil on board51 x 48cm (20 x 18¾ in.)Painted circa 1960.Provenance:Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., LondonChristened early in his career as the golden boy of Neo-Romanticism by Bryan Robertson, Alan Reynolds was held in international acclaim for his beautifully executed paintings of Kentish orchards, hop fields, grasses and teasel heads. His work was bought by the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Fleischman Collection in Pittsburgh. With sell out exhibitions to international institutions and respected collectors alike it shocked the London art scene of the 1960s when Reynolds became an abstract artist. He first exhibited his non-figurative work at the Redfern Gallery in 1960. This transitional exhibition saw him using an earthen palette, reminiscent of his earlier landscapes on paired down geometric forms and constructions. Although this was seen as a seismic shift in his output, for Reynolds it was a natural progression in his oeuvre and something that he had hinted at as far back as 1953 when he referred to painting as a problem of solving equations; tonal, linear, and so on. The subject or motif must be transformed and become an organic whole. Poetry is never absent from Nature, but alone it cannot constitute a work of art. It must be reconciled with the elements of design and composition. Laying emphasis on the formal values in a work will therefore result in a degree of abstraction.The present work manages to seamlessly synthesise nostalgia with contemporary doctrines in a rare example from this period in which Reynolds first moves into abstraction
60
λ ALAN REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1926-2014), STRUCTURE: RED AND GREEN λ ALAN REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1926-2014)STRUCTURE: RED AND GREENOil on board51 x 48cm (20 x 18¾ in.)Painted circa 1960.Provenance:Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., LondonChristened early in his career as the golden boy of Neo-Romanticism by Bryan Robertson, Alan Reynolds was held in international acclaim for his beautifully executed paintings of Kentish orchards, hop fields, grasses and teasel heads. His work was bought by the Tate Gallery in London, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Fleischman Collection in Pittsburgh. With sell out exhibitions to international institutions and respected collectors alike it shocked the London art scene of the 1960s when Reynolds became an abstract artist. He first exhibited his non-figurative work at the Redfern Gallery in 1960. This transitional exhibition saw him using an earthen palette, reminiscent of his earlier landscapes on paired down geometric forms and constructions. Although this was seen as a seismic shift in his output, for Reynolds it was a natural progression in his oeuvre and something that he had hinted at as far back as 1953 when he referred to painting as a problem of solving equations; tonal, linear, and so on. The subject or motif must be transformed and become an organic whole. Poetry is never absent from Nature, but alone it cannot constitute a work of art. It must be reconciled with the elements of design and composition. Laying emphasis on the formal values in a work will therefore result in a degree of abstraction.The present work manages to seamlessly synthesise nostalgia with contemporary doctrines in a rare example from this period in which Reynolds first moves into abstraction
You may also like
