Page 38 - Studio International - February 1966

Peter Schmidt : the experience of Time

by Alexander Weatherson

Born Berlin 1931 ; Painting, like love, is an activity where the later develop- course with the painter in the finding of the ultimate
came to England 1938 ; ments are more satisfactory, and have more profound form of the picture. The spectator is able to recreate the
began painting 1946.
Goldsmiths' College School implications for the future. The paintings of Peter painting at each stage and identify himself not only
of Art 1951-53; Slade Schmidt extend optical phenomena beyond the level with the impact of the final product but with each grave
School of Art 1953-57 ; of purely retinal frisson to a point where the eye is given decision as to its future form.
began teaching at Watford
College of Technology a series of propositions which are satisfactory both The element of time-shared in painting as a two-way
(Dept. of Painting) 1959. logically and emotionally as well as visually. aesthetic is here an extension of experience and a
First one-man show at Beaux An early interest in the apparently-isolated notes in the formal creative proposition carrying painting into the
Arts Gallery, London, 1961 ;
subject of BBC TV film music of Webern and their sequence in time initiated preserves of music and poetry, which although invited
Departures 1961 ; first the forms in the first of his paintings, where scattered by the common element of metre, seem to throw their
exhibition of abstract work rice-like shapes on a green ground provided a pictorial shadows over the process.
Curwen Gallery, London,
February 1966. parallel with the musical intervals by the insistence or In the latest pictures now on exhibition at the Curwen
Interested in mathematics reticence of tone and colour and by the seemingly- Gallery this logical-illogical partnership has led to a
and influenced by musical casual arrangement. The radical and economic logic in series of large, incandescent, centrally-placed images,
ideas, Webern, Stockhausen.
these pictures provides a natural congenial field for where delicate graduated forms spread out from a
development, and the emphasis on planned-pro- central core or from a series of cores, each one a focus
grammed growth and the interest and exploitation of of energy for the slowly-evolving shapes spreading to
the dynamic use of progression makes its appearance. the edges of the canvas. The image seems to grow
The paintings at this stage begin to couple two according to its own laws as if the size and shape of
apparently contradictory trends a mark made peri- the canvas just provided a convenient ground. Minute
pherally on the canvas is followed by another extended graduations of colour are composed of precise, refrac-
in the same direction, and then by another, within a tive, delicate striations, infinitely profound in colour.
Right
No title 1965 pre-conceived colour-tone scheme, but allowed spon- Each point of departure enlarges, and, as if having
Black gouache on paper taneously to develop: the development always under reached adulthood, produces at a measured distance
Design for silk-screen print
30 x 20 in. the jurisdiction of intuitive processes leading into another focus and then another, a series whose vertebral
imaginative adventures, into tracks, language frag- connection is reinforced by following curving foetus-
Below
No title 1965 ments, symbols, and neologisms. A process of accretion like forms.
Black and White which, formally controlled at the outset, encourages the The painter has said that he wishes to 'speak to the eye
Emulsion on canvas
50 x 50 in. fellow-traveller in the development to complete the and to the logical faculties' at the same time ; in these

paintings Schmidt both realises and goes beyond his
intentions. He shows that, while being willing to submit
his procedure to a refined and logical dissection, he
has a gift for ensnaring a vision which is mysterious and
internal and has analogies emotionally far beyond his
reasoned boundaries. q