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Description: signed on a label attached to the reverse

oil on card laid down on board

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Dimensions: the central image: 46 by 71cm., 18 by 28in., the whole: 61 by 89cm., 24 by 35in.

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Provenance: Acquired directly from the Artist by the present owner's family

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Exhibited: London, Lords Gallery, Kenneth Martin, 1962, no.21.

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Notes: Martin made his first abstract paintings in 1948-49, and although his main reputation has been as a sculptor, he continued to paint throughout his career. However, during the 1950s very few paintings were executed; many of these are in public collections. Indeed in Martin's 1975 Tate Gallery retrospective exhibition only four paintings from the 1949-1957 period were shown and of these, three belonged to public collections. Consequently, his achievement as a painter in this period has been perhaps overlooked.

The present work uses an oval form as its main theme, repeating this within the composition. Both Martin and Victor Pasmore had used the oval theme in paintings of 1952-53 and much of the inspiration behind this was drawn from investigation of theories of natural mathematical repetition and replication found in the zoologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 1917 book, On Growth and Form, a work that influenced many of Martin's generation. However, in the later 1950s both artists began to use the oval form again and in the present painting the interlinked and overlaid forms both delineated and suggested establish a very complex composition. The close relationship with his contemporary sculpture is particularly notable, and in the period photographs which show the shadows cast by the mobiles, the forms of the painting appears clearly.

Where Martin differed from many of his contemporaries was in his use of colour. Whilst most constructivists' paintings of the period tended to be in a very simple and muted palette or, like Anthony Hill had abandoned painting altogether, Martin used a good deal of colour, related to his own studies and writings on the subject, and in the present painting we see the combination of red, white, lavender, green, black and blue which appears again and again in various permutations until the end of his career.