Alan Reynolds

Recent Reliefs and Drawings

27 January - 26 March 2011

Annely Juda Fine Art is proud to announce our 7th solo exhibition of the work of Alan Reynolds (b.1926).

The exhibition consists of constructed white reliefs and tonal drawings and prints. The pieces in the exhibition display Reynolds’ forty-year investigation into the interplay of the horizontal and vertical, shadow and light.

These works, created during the past decade, reveal the continuing exploration by the artist of form, rhythm, structure and equilibrium. At first approach the works convey an austere, conscious formality, which in less able hands than Reynolds’ could create a barrier to the viewer. However, Reynolds, through a lifelong contemplation and exploration of tonality and structure, has the ability to create pieces which transcend the visual and touch upon the subconscious, rhythmic pulse within, inviting us to stay engaged with the work.

Though highly structured and carefully rendered, the works are without artifice, in fact the concrete aspect of his art is an extension of, and indebtedness to, his early investigations and responses to nature. Though often referred to in his early career as a landscape painter, he was never methodically representational. In the works of the ‘40s and ‘50s one can see a response to the world rather than a replication of it. Reynolds is an artist who listens as much as he sees.

In his own words: What seems to occur is a fusion of both rational and the intuitive elements and the flux and flow of creativity comes into being. The units which comprise an object, a relief, a drawing, etc have their own voice to speak and so prior to the assembly of the former they can also provide a dialogue.

In conjunction with this exhibition, there is a 192 page illustrated monograph: Alan Reynolds: The Making of a Concretist Artist by Michael Harrison, Director of Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge. This book is a definitive biography and history of the artist and his practice with over 200 illustrations.

Alan Reynolds studied at the Woolwich Polytechnic winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Art in the early 1950s. He taught at St Martin's School of Art during the 1950s and 1960s becoming Senior lecturer in painting in 1985.

His work features in the permanent collections of many national and international museums
including the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, National Museum of Canada, National Museum of Victoria and the National Galleries of Scotland.