Jeremy MoonDrawing [19/11/71] 1971

Drawing [19/11/71] is one of a group of fourteen works in pencil and oil pastel in Tate’s collection (T12222–T12235) by the abstract artist Jeremy Moon. This drawing comprises a rectangular frame in which a grid made up of numerous parallel diagonal lines is drawn over a yellow plane. The spaces between the parallel lines are blocked in with diverse colours, including tones of pink, red and purple, and green. The drawing is signed.

Drawings formed a very significant part of Moon’s output and Tate’s examples, produced between 1967 and 1973, date from the latter part of the artist’s short career. Moon was one of a generation of British abstract painters that emerged in the early 1960s and included Robyn Denny (born 1930) and John Hoyland (born 1934). Their work, which owed much to American Hard-Edge and Colour Field painting, was large scale, colourful and rigorously non representational. Despite their small size, Moon’s drawings share many of the concerns of his paintings, at least in their treatment of space, colour and form… (read more)