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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Fine Australian & International Art
• Sale Date:
  02 May 2016 ~ 6.30pm - Part 1 - Lots 1 - 47
  03 May 2016 ~ 2.30pm - Part 2 - Lots 48 - 320
• Lot #:
  29
• Lot Description:
  Paul Partos
  (1943-2002)
  The Same, Seen from the Inside 1986
  oil on canvas
  127 x 101 cm
  signed, dated and titled verso: Paul Partos '86 THE SAME, SEEN FROM THE INSIDE
• Provenance:
  Gould Galleries, Melbourne 1989 (label verso); Private collection, Melbourne
• Notes:
  Underpinning the sumptuous paint and tender colour of Paul Partos's The Same Seen from the Inside 1986 is the balance between its lyrical gestural paintwork and the cool conceptual geometry inherent in the rectangular format of the canvas. This work is a masterful exploration of the two directions that drove Paul Partos as an artist - the love of gestural expressionist paint and the desire for order and precision. It is the dichotomy between the 'felt experience' versus that of cerebral or intellectual enquiry. Essentially abstract and in sonorous grey/blue tones, The Same Seen from the Inside presents an implied grid within a grid, with a series of small painterly squares on a larger square, tensioned against the underground of scumbled tones. Soon after graduating from RMIT, Paul Partos's career took off in 1965 when his first solo exhibition in Melbourne of brightly coloured, abstract Picasso-esque figure paintings was widely acclaimed. Its success enabled him to travel overseas following which he became interested in the cool, minimal style of the New York School. He quickly adopted the use of acrylic paint with a spray-gun technique, which obliterated the artist's gesture in favour of unmodulated fields of saturated colour. In 1968 Partos was included in the National Gallery of Victoria's The Field exhibition that announced the emergence of the international colourfield style in Australia. His wall construction Vesta 1968 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) in this exhibition had an open central void that revealed the supporting wall and thereby emphasized the edges of the work. Significantly, this focus on the edges remained a stratagem that Partos continued to explore and employ over many decades; during the 70s when he was involved with Conceptual art through to the 80s and 90s when he returned to oil paint, expressive texture and lyrical colour. It is evident here in The Same, Seen from the Inside, in the vertical blue stripe and the outer incised grey lines that emphasize the edges of the canvas. Frances Lindsay AM
• Estimate:
  A$9,000 - 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.