Page 53 - Studio International - June 1965

Anthony Fry London Commentary
Nude 2 1964
Mixed media on board
39½ x 45} (detail)
New Art Centre

Nicholas Georgiadis, fresh from his triumph as
designer of sets and costumes for the new Royal Ballet
Romeo and Juliet, is showing new paintings at the
Hamilton Gallery. He is continuing his absorption in
solid structure of hard-edged elements set in their own
rigid two-dimensional framework. The colours with
which he fills in these elements are generally and
intentionally neutral; it is not the intention to have a
colour vibrating or setting up spatial tensions that
would detract in any way from the diagrammatic
design that is the raison d'etre of the painting. This
apparent dichotomy, of course, sets up its own tensions
so that we are regarding, as it were, the proscenium
arch with the safety curtain down though the per­
formance, some performance, is about to begin.
Anthony Fry, exhibiting new work at the New Art
Centre, is concentrating his figures in smaller canvases.
Their mood too is changing to one more sweet and
lyrical than the former more dense and balletic com­
positions.
At Gimpel Fils, Harry Seager exhibited another form of
sculpture employing objets trouves. This time it is glass,
mostly green of the ribbed and striped opaque variety.
The forms and shapes that are created have vitality and a
good deal of suggestions of movement including flight.
The transparency of the material lends itself to countless
nuances of effect under changing and changeable light
conditions.
Sidney Nolan in recent work, showing at Marlborough
Fine Art, continues to work oils on hardboard with all
the fluency and fluidity that marked his former paintings
in plastic medium. Kelly appears again as the motive in
the paintings of the outback. but his scale has changed.
He is now a minor detail even in a panel as large as
Kelly and Policeman which measures five feet by four
feet. It is the trees and the contour of the river bed and
its banks that strike the dominant note-the landscape
makes its own unmistakable imprint on the artist and
Krystyn Zielinski the spectator, seen in the impressive icescapes of
M.8.64 Metal
Grabowski Gallery Antarctica which show the truth of ice as not white
but blue green.
Ewan Phillips has now opened his own basement
gallery at 22a Maddox Street with a simple and effective
idea: inexpensive objets d'art can be bought for very
I ittle as wel I as contemporary artist-designed jewellery in
addition to the little gems of modern paintings, draw­
ings and water-colours.
Josef Herman showing oils and drawings at Roland
Browse and Delbanco sold out completely and earned
enough to finance a trip to Barbados and Mexico. His
success proves the logical reward of a talent consistently
cultivated on the ground of firm principles. There shall
be figures, there shall be flowers and the solid appurten­
ances of country life: they are painted in rich red and
earthy colours that by association are permanent as
the earth itself. Typification in a concrete form of the
idea of life in a still primitive context is the secret.
Trevor Tennant exhibiting at Molton Gallery has found
an immense enjoyment in modelling small to large
figures in a personal adaptation of polyester resin. The
show is titled 'Figures in Movement' and these slim
armature thin artifacts move with a compelling grace
and life.
Marcello Salvadori brings seriousness and an immense
poetic atmosphere to the polaroid objects, traces and
contraction and expansion machines shown at Signals
Gallery. Evanescent visual effects are created in un­
assertive ways that are subtly insidious. ■
267