Three Small Discs on Blue: October 1962

Discussing his work in A Note on my Painting: 1962, written for the artist's exhibition at the Lienhard Gallery in Zurich in January 1963, the artist comments, 'For a very long time, now, I have realised that my over-riding interest is colour. Colour is both the subject and the means; the form and the content; the image and the meaning, in my painting to-day ... It is obvious that colour is now the only direction in which painting can travel. Painting has still a continent to explore, in the direction of colour (and in no other direction) ... it seems obvious to me that we are still only at the beginning of our discovery and enjoyment of the superbly exciting facts of the world of colour. One reels at the colour possibilities now: the varied and contrasting intensities, opacities, transparencies; the seeming density and weight, warmth, coolness, vibrancy; or the superbly inert 'dull' colours - such as the marvellously uneventful expanses of the surface of an old green door in the sunlight. Or the terrific zing of a violet vibration ... a violent violet flower, with five petals, suspended against the receptive furry green of leaves in a greenhouse!'.

Dr Dennis Farr, C.B.E., the previous owner of this work, was director of the Courtauld Institute Galleries from 1980-1993, and is the author of Lynn Chadwick, London, 2003, and other publications on British art.