Peter Upward

PVA on canvas

183.00 x 122.00

signed and dated u.r.; signed, dated and titled on reverse

Provenance: Peter Upward Estate; Private Collection, NSW

Exhibited: Peter Upward, Rudy Komon Gallery, 1972;
Peter Upward, Charles Nodrum Gallery, 1986, No 6;
Blue, Annandale Galleries, 1998;
Peter Upward, Charles Nodrum Gallery, 2000, No 14;
Frozen Gestures: the Art of Peter Upward, Penrith Regional Gallery & the Lewers Bequest, 20 October 2 December 2007, No 34

Literature & references: Kim Bonython, Modern Australian Paintings 1950-75, Rigby 1980, illus p 146;
Christopher Dean, Frozen Gestures - the Art of Peter Upward, retrospective exhibition catalogue, Penrith, 2007, p 56;
see Elwyn Lynn, In the lollipop movement, the Bulletin, Sydney, April 29, 1972, for a review of the Rudy Komon show.

Note: When Upward returned from London in 1971, he was remembered as one of the leading lights of the predominantly black-and-white gestural abstraction of the previous decade. So the lavish chromatic bursts of poured and swirling colour he exhibited at Rudy Komon's in 1972 caused considerable surprise. I discovered the tropical colours in London but they look better in Australia he remarked at the time. the circular works were poured, and the rectangular works (such as Blue Note) employed varying degrees of scraping and pushing. They were shown in wide, semicylindrical, plastic frames, coloured as tropically as the paintings themselves (though most of these frames have since been lost).

Pressing the resemblance to confectionary, Elwyn Lynn made a comparison: ... last year in England, Hoyland, to take one example, showed canvases of stained areas bespattered with the sweetest globules allowed outside the multi-ice cream shops. He continued: ... but there is no confectionary about a purplish semi-gloss blot on ultramarine framed in brown, ... or in a blue gesture curdling and coagulating in a large area of matt flesh pink. These really put ones sense of rightness in colour to the test and though they sometimes fail themselves, only the most desperate PR man could imagine they would drive one to confectionary.
(Lynn, op cit).
As a series, they remain one of the most stylish, joyous and puzzling suites of work of their era in Australia.