Lot Essay
In collaboration with Turnbull the present work was selected by Richard Morphet for Turnbull's Tate retrospective show in 1973. It was one of only two works from 1960 in the show. In these, Turnbull was primarily concerned in deployed colour rather than in making shapes:
'I am concerned with the canvas as a continuous field, where the edge created by the meeting of coloured areas is more the tension in a field than the boundary of a shape' (W. Morphet, William Turnbull Sculpture and Painting, London, 1973, p. 40).
Lawrence Alloway comments on his paintings of the 1960s:
'His paintings have a tense, poised balance ... His pictures are fields of colour, rather than figure-field relationships, so that the whole painting is the form and not just the container of separate forms ... the surface is a softly breathing skin' (L. Alloway, 'Avant Garde, London', Image, October 1960, pp. 38 - 43).
'I am concerned with the canvas as a continuous field, where the edge created by the meeting of coloured areas is more the tension in a field than the boundary of a shape' (W. Morphet, William Turnbull Sculpture and Painting, London, 1973, p. 40).
Lawrence Alloway comments on his paintings of the 1960s:
'His paintings have a tense, poised balance ... His pictures are fields of colour, rather than figure-field relationships, so that the whole painting is the form and not just the container of separate forms ... the surface is a softly breathing skin' (L. Alloway, 'Avant Garde, London', Image, October 1960, pp. 38 - 43).