Stephen Gilbert

Catalogue entry

T00464 STRUCTURE 14C 1961
 
Not inscribed.
Polished aluminium with Perspex base, 30 1/2×48×32 (77·5×102×81).
Purchased from the Drian Galleries (Knapping Fund) 1961.
Exh: Drian Galleries, December 1961 (9).
Lit: Stephen Gilbert in Architectural Design, XXXII, 1962, p.206, repr. p.207.

The artist wrote (5 February 1962) that 14a, which had been sold in Paris, was a model for 14c about ten inches high, and that 14b (repr. Architectural Design, XXXII, 1962, p.207) was a smaller, fairly similar version measuring 22 3/4×33 1/2 in. He continued by quoting from his article in Architectural Design:

‘In 1958 ... I went back to personal work, and developed a free-standing type of structure in curved radiating planes, using at first anodized metallic surfaces in colour; later uncoloured and highly polished ones. In the latter, the curvilinear forms develop in reflecting surfaces, which also pick up ambient colour and light. This changing colour and light, by its fluidity and movement, cut across by shadows, partially masks and sometimes completely transforms the original structural elements. An extremely mobile and complex system of tonalities is built up from reflections, in the composition of which elements of colour and light are brought forward, which escape control and appear disassociated. These visual metamorphoses of the material structure multiply to infinity the means of describing space.’

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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