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John Piper 1903-1992
Tall Forms on Dark Blue 1937 Oil and ripolin on canvas laid on panel 30 x 10 ¾ inches (76 x 27.5 cm) PROVENANCE The Leicester Galleries, London; Acquired there by Dr J.E.O. Mayne, 1959; His sale, Christie’s, London, 22 October 1997 (21); Private Collection. EXHIBITED Artists of Fame and Promise, The Leicester Galleries, London, July-August 1959, (cat. no.96, as ‘Abstract Composition 1937’); John Piper: A Retrospective, Grey College, University of Durham, 2 April-15 May 1999 (no.2, repr. p.4); John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 1 April-22 June 2003 (no.44, repr. pp.132 and 133 detail). John Piper 1903-1992, The Fine Art Society, London, 20 May-22 June 2012 (no.2 repr.) LITERATURE S. John Woods (intro.), John Piper, Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs 1932–1954, Faber & Faber, London 1955, illustrated pl.26. |
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Painted in 1937, Tall Forms on Dark Blue belongs to the brief but pivotal period in which John Piper emerged as one of the leading figures of British abstraction. Closely associated with the modernist journals Axis and Circle, Piper was then at the forefront of Britain's engagement with the European avant-garde.
As leading Piper specialist David Fraser Jenkins observed, the painting marks a 'crucial step' in Piper’s development. Piper constructed a free-standing assembly of painted shapes in the studio and then made paintings of the object itself. Tall Forms on Dark Blue therefore occupies a fascinating position between abstraction and representation: both an abstract composition and, in Fraser Jenkins’ words, ‘a depiction of the secret space of this painted construction’. The work possesses an unusual physical and visual complexity. Rather than treating abstraction as a flat arrangement of forms, Piper constructed a free-standing assembly of painted shapes in the studio and then painted the object itself. He further enriched the surface by laying canvas onto plywood and cutting out shaped elements, creating a low-relief structure whose ridges and recessions animate the composition. Contrasts between matt and reflective ripolin surfaces heighten this effect, while the resulting interplay of light and shadow lends the work an almost sculptural presence. More than a painted image, Tall Forms on Dark Blue is a hand-made experimental object, occupying a fascinating territory between painting, collage and relief construction. The narrow upright format lends the composition an architectural rhythm, with deep blue, black, grey and muted earth colours rising vertically like suspended fragments or totemic forms. Works from Piper's abstract period are exceptionally rare and are now regarded among the most intellectually ambitious achievements of twentieth-century British art. Included in the landmark exhibition John Piper in the 1930s: Abstraction on the Beach at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2003, Tall Forms on Dark Blue stands among the most compelling surviving examples of Piper's pre-war abstract vision, combining scholarly importance with remarkable visual authority. |