Alan Green (1932 – 2003) wanted to create “ordinary paintings as ordinary as the real world”. This came from his belief that, in the second half of the 20th century, artists carried too much baggage to be able to experience “things”.
Green was one of the great British abstract artists whose formative years were spent in London in the 1960s. He was trained as an illustrator and graphic designer which freed him from the theoretical constraints of art history. In the mid 1960s he made field paintings (which were remarkably advanced for their time) – in which his colour and its application dictated the form. His paintings are deliberately non emotional and controlled.
This exhibition is the first since his death in 2003 and is the 12th solo exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art. It includes 10 late paintings from 1991 to 2002 and 23 drawings. The paintings, some over three meters in length, explore concealment and transparency. Their texture and method of application (variously using multiple layers of his own paint mixed from raw pigment and applied with the use of stencils, combs and brushes) encourage the viewer to analyse tone, plane and colour but also to see the whole work as engaging and physical. It is, as Green himself said, as if the “painting can become like a symbol of a painting”. These later works are among the most important that Alan Green made over his long and successful career.
