Jack Bush

Catalogue entry

Jack Bush 1909-1977

T00900 Colour Column on Suede 1965

Inscribed 'OIL | Jack Bush | April 1965' on back of canvas
Oil on canvas, 89 1/4 x 54 (226.5 x 137)
Purchased from the artist through the Waddington Galleries (Knapping Fund) 1967
Exh: Jack Bush - Recent Paintings, Waddington Galleries, London, February-March 1967 (6)

The artist wrote (28 May 1967): 'It is one of a series I painted during 1964-66. It is painted in oil on canvas duck, which was sized with rabbit skin glue prior to painting. All the canvases in this series were stretched on a false wall, with plenty of extra canvas all round, so as to allow the "column" or central image, to get itself placed or surrounded, with the "ground" colour; not a background - but an active-neutral two sides that would bring the "column" to its greatest pitch in colour. The amount of ground needed seemed crucial, so that the cropping was done only after the canvas was completed.

'Since then, I have been attempting to make that ground much more active, so that I am ending up with an allover image.'

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.89, reproduced p.89

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