Page 54 - Studio International - November 1965

motives are seen as areas of space that can recede or firm straight edge of table top or landfall. Description is
advance according to the concentration of our view. never sought after. thou9h the pillar of lighthouse or
This 'reverse' imagery in which the frame becomes the church spire can be the firm anchor around which the
window. so to speak, is productive of invariably interest­ voluptuous atmosphere swirls and blooms. in paintings
ing relationships. such as Seascape the movement of the colour masses
Donald Hamilton Fraser held his sixth one-man brushed in luminous brio has an euphoric stimulation
exhibition at the Gimpel Fils Gallery where he first rarely encountered in the era of angst.
showed in 1953. In all this time, his work has been John Hubbard, an American painter only two years
singular for the beauty of its colour and the belle mat/ere younger than Hamilton Fraser. has lived in England
of his paint. For some unaccountable reason. the Tate since 1960 when he held his first one-man show at the
Gallery. buying in recent years with more enthusiasm New Art Centre. He studied under the unique teacher
than discrimination. has as yet failed to acquire a single Hans Hofmann and he has developed his own approach
canvas by this brilliant young British artist. The present to landscape that has its affinity with Hamilton Fraser.
show marks a return to the motive of sea, land and still It could almost be called Luminism. For Hubbard the
life with a flooding light that transcends each canvas light is of paramount importance too even to the extent
from top of the background to the horizon line. animat­ that it is its passage through shadow and reflected areas
ing each facet of the paste with reflections on the ridged of woodland and cloud that makes the central attraction
pigment. If a passing thought of de Stael is conjured up, to his large canvases and little oil-on-paper studies.
it is with this difference-that Hamilton Fraser. as he is From the Garden of the Torre, Bellosguardo, has a
now catalogued. is not concerned vvith the solid slab but density in its masses that are only fleetingly apparent as
with the varied angle of attack that brush can make on the mist of the light moves across them In his recent
the surface of his canvas. setting in motion the fluid exhibition at the New Art Centre we see a progression
colour. Intense and high in key these deluges of blues. in a steady consolidation of ideas worked towards the
reds. purples and orange are of Turneresque diversity yet end of plastic reality. It is surely no accident that he titles
almost without exception anchored to the ground by the one of his largest canvases as Rockv Woodland
(Homage to Courbet) As did Courbet, he permits light
to emerge from the canvas outwards from the brightness
of the underpainting so that the darkest tones of his
forms are caught in the cross fire of two illuminations.
As part of the Commonwealth Arts Festival. the Royal
Festival Hall housed several exhibitions of which 'Con­
temporary Art from India' and 'New Art from Rhodesia'
conveyed best the efforts of painters and sculptors east
and south of Suez in the Commonwealth. In the former.
it was salutary to see pictorial ideas proJected in con­
ceptions that owed nothing to current western trends
of 'pop' and 'op'. Satish Gujral was evident in a high­
keyed abstraction of Cathedral on a vivid green ground
and M. F. Husain conJured the figurative motives of
buildings and persons into a white and grey harmony.
Tyeb Mehta. Shanti Dave. Krishen Khanna and
Santosh were artists whose canvases typified
approaches well-integrated with personality in which
the plastic image was autographic.
The Rhodesian show of both sculpture and painting
was the work of artists. most of whom had worked in the
workshop school of the Rhodes National Gallery, Salis­
bury, where the inspired direction of Frank Mc Ewen has
Ii berated an expressionist feeling that takes I ittle account
of so-called international trends. There is a serious and
uninhibited gravity in these massive carved heads from
stone that preserves the ageless prototype of primitive
man. Boira M'Teki and Jorem Mariga are the names of
the two masters in this totemic imagery. In painting
Thomas Mukarobgwa and Joseph Ndandarika with
scant regard for tonal modelling compose their can­
vases with colours as they might weave a coat and the
result is as warming, spiritually as chromatically.
From the veneers of furniture. Maurice Jadot peels
away the skin to reveal those secret landscapes that no
one but he knows are there. Excellently hung in his
latest one-man exhibition at the Molton Gallery this
sensitive Belgian painter-sculptor's latest offerings
include not only the painted wood sculpture but the
successfully cast bronzes that bear the imprint of their
wood matrix. His three-dimensional sense is so
John Hubbard
From the Garden of the Torre. Bel/osguardo 1964 acute that those little broken-surfaced pillars take
65 X 60 1n.
New Art Centre on the presences of human gods. I!
216