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Lot Essay
In 1958 Nicholson left St Ives and moved with his wife Felicitas Vogler to Ticino in Southern Switzerland. From there Nicholson took advantage of the opportunity to travel in Europe and in April the following year he visited Greece and the Aegean. Greece had captured his imagination for many years, and he had used Greek place names for several works throughout the 1950s - Delos, Cyclades, Aegean and Crete. Peter Khoroche likens this to Hepworth's use of Greek place names in her sculptures, used 'to suggest affinities with the light of the Aegean or the massive remains of Greek temples' (Ben Nicholson: drawings and painted reliefs, Aldershot, 2002, p. 91).
Oct 59 (Mycenae 2) is among the works that Nicholson produced from his subsequent trips to Greece at this time. Other works are 1959 (Mycenae) (private collection) and 1959, November (Mycenae 3, brown and blue) (private collection). About the former Norbert Lynton writes: 'The row of still-life objects that is the theme and composition of 1959 (Mycenae) hover mysteriously between material presence and transparency. Even the pale blue and the light olive green areas, though we see them first as opaque colour patches, do not assert themselves as stable surfaces ... The scraped surface of much of it is a mere memory of whiteness and the objects seem to disappear with it before our eyes, in spite of their clear lines and occasional shadows' (Ben Nicholson, London, 1993, p. 171). This description of the colours and surface of 1959 (Mycenae), and of the associations with Greece that these have, can be borrowed to describe the present painting.
Years earlier in 1941, Nicholson had discussed the advantages of abstract art over representational art to express the sense of place, specifically of Greece: 'One of the main differences between a representational and an abstract painting is that the former can transport you to Greece by a representation of blue skies and seas, olive groves and marble columns, but in order that you may take part in this you will have to concentrate on the painting, whereas the abstract version by its free use of form and colour will be able to give you the actual quality of Greece itself, and this will become part of the light and space and life in the room - there is no need to concentrate, it becomes part of living' ('Notes on "Abstract" Art', Horizon, vol. 4, no. 22, October 1941, pp. 272-6: cited in P. Khoroche, ibid., p. 92).
Oct 59 (Mycenae 2) is among the works that Nicholson produced from his subsequent trips to Greece at this time. Other works are 1959 (Mycenae) (private collection) and 1959, November (Mycenae 3, brown and blue) (private collection). About the former Norbert Lynton writes: 'The row of still-life objects that is the theme and composition of 1959 (Mycenae) hover mysteriously between material presence and transparency. Even the pale blue and the light olive green areas, though we see them first as opaque colour patches, do not assert themselves as stable surfaces ... The scraped surface of much of it is a mere memory of whiteness and the objects seem to disappear with it before our eyes, in spite of their clear lines and occasional shadows' (Ben Nicholson, London, 1993, p. 171). This description of the colours and surface of 1959 (Mycenae), and of the associations with Greece that these have, can be borrowed to describe the present painting.
Years earlier in 1941, Nicholson had discussed the advantages of abstract art over representational art to express the sense of place, specifically of Greece: 'One of the main differences between a representational and an abstract painting is that the former can transport you to Greece by a representation of blue skies and seas, olive groves and marble columns, but in order that you may take part in this you will have to concentrate on the painting, whereas the abstract version by its free use of form and colour will be able to give you the actual quality of Greece itself, and this will become part of the light and space and life in the room - there is no need to concentrate, it becomes part of living' ('Notes on "Abstract" Art', Horizon, vol. 4, no. 22, October 1941, pp. 272-6: cited in P. Khoroche, ibid., p. 92).