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56 ALBERT IRVIN RA (1922-2015) Tanza (1986)Acrylic on canvas, 152.5 X 183 cm (60 X 72”)
Signed and dated (19)’86 verso
Provenance: From the Collection of the late Gillian Bowler.
Exhibited:
“Albert Irvin”
, The Hendriks Gallery, Dublin 1986, where purchased by Gillian Bowler.
‘
Tanza
’ (1986), more compact and tighter in its organization than
‘Glenmore’
, is also expressive of Albert Irvin’s belief
in the power of abstract shapes to convey feeling more intensively than representation. Music, which he saw as the
embodiment of this quality was deeply important to him and his taste embraced classical musicians like Rostropovich,
but also experimental composers like Morton Feldman. Through his abstract painting he strove for the immediacy
of communication with the spectator that music invariably provides. Like Kandinsky, he believed that both art forms
employ a language ‘about the world’ rather than ‘of’ it.
The basic structural elements in ‘
Tanza’
come from a well-tried and tested group, - a strong diagonal, used alone or in
slightly varying parallel groupings, often bridged or intersected by a more horizontal one. These are generally accom-
panied by a range of minor motifs, such as chevrons, quatrefoils, flower head or star-like shapes and circles. Flat areas
of colour are interrupted and articulated by splashes and droplets of colour deposited by a flick of a loaded brush or
sprayed out from a squeegee. Irvin often arranges torn and cut-out coloured paper onto sections of the canvas to try
out colour arrangements and these add a sense of layering, of past and present, before and after to the paintings,
along with the idea of constant movement, to and fro, traverses and reverses.
The origins of his marks and motifs tell an interesting story too. One of the most powerful influences on Albert Irvin’s
work is a celebrated war painting, ‘
Battle of Britain
’, 1941 (Imperial War Museum, London) by Paul Nash in which the
frenzy of the battle is revealed only in the tangle of smoke trails left in the sky by the fighter planes. Irvin points to this
abstract tangle as the most powerful evidence of what has gone on during the engagement, and used similar methods
to trace physical journeys, their speed, direction, strength and so on in his own work. Similarly, the abstract language of
Australian Aboriginal art to record their history offered him a model for his own formal development, but he is careful
not to borrow from other artists or cultures unless he has shared their cultural experience. On a visit to Venice in the
1990s he saw carved quatrefoils on the Doge’s Palace and used them widely in his later paintings.
Albert Irvin was a tall man and he tended to paint on a grand scale which, combined with his zest for colour, makes his
work particularly popular for hospitals, universities and other public buildings around the world. But he was also an
expert print-maker, working just as comfortably in that medium, with considerably smaller compositions.
Catherine Marshall, April 2017
€ 5,000 - 7,000