Page 56 - Studio International - April 1965

1 oddly disproportionate effect in several of them where a gouaches at Sloane Street, gouaches only at the Man-
Zielinski
The King with Falcon single figure almost splits the canvas in two by its sard. This young Australian artist has made a consider-
Elm-Wood truncated column that jars by its seemingly pointless able advance since I saw his one-man exhibition at the
58 in. high
Cassel Gallery decapitation. Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford, two years ago. Then his
2 imagery contained a literary content that was circum-
Derek Boshier In the empty scenes such as Rough Sea, which I re-
Flicker 1964 produce, ten Holt comes to terms with his subject in a scribed in an oddly antipodean fashion.
89 x 79 in.
Robert Fraser Gallery completely integrated unity. The swirling curves of Now the area of the painting is enlarged, the back-
cloud and breakers are worked on the picture plane ground is brought forward and we are in front of an
with vigour and yet accurate judgment of tone so that altar or a space that is highly suggestive of an altar. For
the horizon line is never in doubt. The low key of the the imagery that Rowell creates is allusive not to
palette has its own refreshing effect on our eyes. specific ritual such as that of church or chapel but of
Organisation of paint as colour within the boundaries man and his gods. Painted about a year or more ago,
of a definite design is to be seen in the new paintings we see man conceived as the sacrifice, bound and inert.
by Gillian Ayres at the Kasmin Gallery. Here the motives Behind looms the dark outline of an idol—its history is
are flowers and plant forms that in stripes and curved uncertain, symbolic rather than Christian, savage rather
bands bring to mind some of the sensual arabesques of than civilised but the import is clear—that man is
Kupka. On a cream ground the paint covers only per- delivered to a fate that leaves the deity unconcerned.
haps as much as half the area and in the broadly The most recent of the large paintings by Rowell are
balanced countercharge we are involved in a massive on a rather more optimistic note. The sombre deity has
movement before our eyes. This flat confrontation of the gone, on the altar is not the fettered man, but an offering
colour plan in big areas, for all its differences brings the that is half bouquet, half fertile landscape, orbs that
art of Gillian Ayres into the category of previous ex- could be wall openings let in a glowing light. There is
hibitors at this gallery who include Kenneth Noland, still the spiritual atmosphere investing the whole rec-
Morris Louis and Bernard Cohen. Broadly described, it tangular surface but now of a dynamic incandescence.
makes the house style of Kasmin as demanding a large In some of the gouaches is a radiance that is of great
support, an absence of heaped paint, huge areas of un- beauty. Colour has liberated the former tightness of
covered background and absolutely no perspective Rowell's forms and he emerges as one of the most
drawing at all. Yet, as we think of her previous paintings interesting young painters of our time.
shown not so long ago at the Hamilton Galleries, it is Eila Hershon was born in Boston and now lives in
not quite certain that the new organisation and control Germany. She held her first one-man exhibition in
has given as much spontaneity and interior force as the London at the Molton Gallery where her large figure
previous works contained. compositions show an affinity with Francis Bacon and
The Waddington Galleries have opened premises Edvard Munch superficially. It is there their resemblance
additional to those at No. 2 Cork Street. Across the ends for in her crying women and embracing figures the
road at No. 25, the father Victor will show paintings of line defines the edge of a mass without its contours.
older generations than his son Leslie. He began with an The effect is that of seeing bodies underwater—they
exhibition of works by Jack B. Yeats recently acquired move but with a strange silence. Somewhat overblown,
from private sources including the collection of the late some of the paintings gain by diminution in the drawn
Richard McGonigal. It was a finely mixed show ranging versions on paper. Scale is a relative problem, not
in date from the early Fresh Horses of 1912 to the almost always solved by mere enlargement, as the remarks
surreal painting of two men standing apart in The Top about Yeats relate.
of the Tide 1955. Yeats was that rare bird, the poet in Derek Boshier, refreshed from his travels to India and
paint, whose rhymes and language rarely strayed from the United States, has his first one-man show at the
the scenes of his native Ireland. One feels the lilt and the Robert Fraser Gallery where he continues the experi-
breathing pauses in such scenes as Quays of Dublin ments begun in the works exhibited at the Whitechapel
where one man can hear another six feet away and has Gallery in 'The New Generation 1964' exhibition. Com-
no need to stand closer. Interval is in fact one of the bined with optical effects, he is painting large canvases
most effective devices used by Yeats. For all its apparent that reject the limitations of the rectangular stretcher
expressionist turmoil, there is always the poet's control convention. In these, scale is an indispensable factor
of his means of expression that fines down to the right and the irregular boundaries of the paint command a
distance of withdrawal. We look into a warm canvas by certain attention ; but it is not always an attention that is
Yeats and see a group or a single figure in the fore- rewarded except in the arbitrary manner of admiration
ground or the middle distance. Such is Yeats' art we are of a personal challenge answered. The eye has seen all
always sure that they are there just as we are sure that but transmitted little inwards ; it is the message of non-
the figure in a Giacometti sculpture is there. commitment.
This placing of his characters even in such a welter Zielinski, Polish born sculptor, exhibiting at the Cassel
of whipped pigment as Horsemen is the secret of Yeats. Gallery, is a craftsman of infinite resource, a master
His picture can never run away with his brush, it is of the modern techniques of joinery and carpentry
rather like the visual record of a concerto in which his which he taught prior to the war in his native land.
brush was the conductor's baton and all ends with the His carvings of the figures of Christ, saints and men
clash of cymbals. Varied, vigorous, Yeats has always a as well as those of animals and birds, combine the
musical colour in his paintings that outside schools or vigorous attack of his power-assisted tools with the
movements will survive autonomously with credit. natural form of the tree trunks that is their medium.
The New Art Centre which has operated with flair and Even in synthetic materials his imagery has the peasant
success in Sloane Street is extending its operations and solidity we associate with the traditional folk art of
has taken over the Mansard Gallery at Heal's, Totten- Poland. In 'The King with Falcon, illustrated, we can
ham Court Road. April exhibitions at both galleries will see the unique contribution of the artist to the natural
be of the works by Kenneth Rowell—oils and a few dignity of the found object. n