LOT DETAILS

Materials:

mixed media on board

Measurements:

48.03 in. (122.00 cm.) (height) by 16.34 in. (41.50 cm.) (width)

Markings:

signed 'Gillian Ayres' (lower left)

Condition:

unframed

Literature:

Mel Gooding, Gillian Ayres, Lund Humphries, Hampshire, 2001, p.27 (col.ill) "It is painted with a brash robustness in oil and household paint on the rough side of hardboard, which gives the surface tooth where the paint is thinly applied, and provides grip for thicker layers. As with the earlier paintings Vertical Blues exploits the contrasts of matt and shiny finish, thick and thin application, smooth and impasto handling, asserting these textural variations as elements as important to the eye as the musical play of colours....Vertical Blues is composed, though not painted, from the edge. The time sequence of the actions that have created the image is visible, undisguised. The smooth dark blues were laid down first; then the impasto whites; then the creamy whites and their overlay of pale blues. These pale forms press into the painting from the vertical edges, like ice-floes locking in passages of dark blue water....With its particular emphasis upon making visible the process of facture, its denial of a 'timeless' completeness of image, Ayres can be seen finding her own way into the contemporary European conversation of abstraction." (Mel Gooding, p.33).