Jack Smith

Black, White and Grey Movement No. 2

1962

© The estate of Jack Smith

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Not on display

Artist: Jack Smith 1928–2011
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1067 x 1067 mm
frame: 1190 x 1190 x 69 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Purchased 1963
Reference: T00570

Catalogue entry

T00570 BLACK, WHITE AND GREY MOVEMENT NO.2 1962

Inscr. ‘Jack Smith 1962 Black, White & Grey Movement. (No.2)’ on back of canvas.
Canvas, 42×42 (107×107).
Purchased from the artist through the Matthiesen Gallery (Knapping Fund) 1963.
Exh: Matthiesen Gallery, February–March 1963 (13, repr.).
Repr: Arts Review, XV, No.3, 23 February–9 March 1963, p.6.

A development from the ‘Black, White and Grey Movement (No.1)’ painting at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York, which ‘is of a more obvious figurative content’ than the Tate picture (letter from the artist, 5 April 1963). The artist also remarked that the second version ‘is much more concerned with a form of musical movement. The word “Movement” in the title has a double meaning, one denoting movement of forms and the other having a musical connotation’. And for the catalogue of his 1963 exhibition the artist wrote a short introduction in which he said, ‘The closer a painting is to a diagram or graph the nearer it is to my intention. I like every mark to establish a fact in the most precise, economical way’.

The series is also related to ‘Turning Nude’ and ‘Figure’ exhibited at the Matthiesen Gallery in 1963 (Nos.1 and 2).

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