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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The John Buckley Collection of Modern & Contemporary Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  13 May 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  47
• Lot Description:
  Alun Leach-Jones
  (born 1937)
  The Romance of Death 1981-82
  acrylic on canvas
  228.5 x 185 cm
  signed, titled and dated verso
• Provenance:
  De-accessioned by Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Sotheby's Australia, 143 Works from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Melbourne, 21 June 1992, Lot 78
• Exhibited:
  Alun Leach Jones: Berliner Arbeiten; Bilder, Zeichnungen, Collagen, Papiergussobjekte, Ku?nstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 1981
• References:
  Michael Haerdeter, Alun Leach Jones: Berliner Arbeiten; Bilder, Zeichnungen, Collagen, Papiergussobjekte, Ku?nstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 1981, p. 1, 3 (illustrated) [titled 'Manchu Red']
• Notes:
  "The goal of my art is to heighten and enlarge perception and feeling into the most vivid image possible."1 Alun Leach-Jones remains one of Australia's most resilient and gifted abstract artists. Born in Northern Wales, he immigrated to Adelaide in 1960 where he studied graphic arts at the South Australian School of Art. For almost half a century, Leach-Jones' art has hovered in the realm of printmaking, sculpting, tapestry design and, of course, painting. A two year sojourn in Europe in the mid '60s brought him into contact with the leading exponents of abstraction and colour-field painting, namely Joseph Albers, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis - two years before the Two Decades of American Painting that showed the work of these artists for the first time in Australia. 2014 marks the centenary of Kazimir Malevich's first exhibition, held at the Salon des IndŽpendantes in Paris. The exhibition signalled the mid-point of the Russian's transformation from figuration to abstraction - something Nicholas de Stael would call l'entre deux. Although some of Leach-Jones' early work referenced Malevich's Black Circle (State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg), throughout his career he maintained an artistic output that could be termed referential abstraction and that straddled between the two styles, evident in Malevich's 1914 exhibition. 'The Romance of Death' series has its origins in Leach-Jones' West Berlin residency at the KŸnstlerhaus Berthanien in 1980, and signalled a departure from small, contained abstractions to large manifestations of blazing colour. When discussing the series, critic Robert Gray noted how, 'despite the hard-edge style, [there is] something of action painting, and pop art. The former in a surface explosiveness, the latter in the allusions and atmosphere, which recall the Mardi Gras, the night club, the ticker-tape parade: those places of modern Dionysian revel'2. Indeed, despite the macabre title, it could be said that this painting is less about death and the darker side of life than it is about colour, music and a joie de vivre that penetrates Leach-Jones' greatest works of art. 1 Alun Leach Jones, 'Notes from Journal, January 1992', Gwalia Deserta: Selected Works by Alun Leach-Jones, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, 1992, p.5 2 Robert Gray, 'Alun Leach-Jones and Baroque Abstraction', Alun Leach-Jones, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1988, p. 9
• Estimate:
  A$10,000 - 15,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.