Co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group, Burgoyne Diller described abstraction as “the ideal realm of harmony, stability and order in which every form and spatial interval could be controlled and measured.” His practice, which focused on the precise placement of geometric forms and primary colour on a white backdrop, took inspiration from the Dutch […]
Archives: Artworks
Untitled (La Lune en Rodage – Carlo Belloli)
Bridget Riley
Synonymous with the Op Art movement, British artist Bridget Riley uses dynamic patterns to make the two-dimensional picture plane vibrate, disorientating the viewer. In 1964, Riley was included in New Generation at the Whitechapel Gallery, London alongside David Hockney, and in the seminal exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York […]
Picture of a Still Life on a Table
David Hockney
One of the most important and prolific British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, David Hockney is synonymous withthe flat planes and bright shades of his early paintings, which captured the sun-drenched idyll of 1960s California, epitomised by his Swimming Pool series (1963-67). Working in acrylic, these works emphasised the two-dimensional quality of the […]
Whole #2
Paul Brach
Born in New York, Paul Brach originally began painting in an Abstract Expressionist style, having met many of the artists in the movement at NYC’s notorious Cedar Tavern, before moving towards Minimalism in the late 1950s. He began showing at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1957 when it opened and went on […]
Topaze Noire – Positif
Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely was born in Hungary. He studied at the Mühely academy, which focused on the applied arts and was often referred to as the Bauhaus of Budapest. It was modelled on the German school and offered classes on the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Josef Albers. In 1930, Vasarely left Budapest for […]
Quathlamba, from V series
Frank Stella
One of the greatest living American artists, Frank Stella changed the direction of contemporary artmaking in 1959 when four of his Black Paintings were exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art — and one was purchased for their permanent collection — a year after the 23-year-old graduated from Princeton. He went on to hold his […]
Cipango (A. 80)+ Gran Cairo (A. 81)
Frank Stella
Cipango (A. 80) and Gran Cairo (A. 81) from Frank Stella’s Multicolored Squares I series, are a clear reference to Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series, which the artist and colour-theorist began in 1951 and developed for over 25 years. In 1970, The Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of Stella’s work, making […]
Entice I
Bridget Riley
“My paintings are, of course, concerned with generating visual sensations, but certainly not to the exclusion of emotion,” says Bridget Riley. “One of my aims is that these two responses shall be experienced as one and the same.” Major retrospectives of her work have been held on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years, […]
O Yellow
Alexander Liberman
Born in Russia, Alexander Liberman studied fine art in Paris before moving to New York at the outbreak of WWII. Shortly afterwards, he joined Condé Nast, where he spent 21 years as art director of Vogue and a further 32 as editorial director of Condé Nast, in which capacity he oversaw their full list of […]
New York City 1
Tom Sachs
Contemporary American sculptor Tom Sachs is best known for his off-kilter recreations of modern pieces which question consumer culture and appropriation. Having initially studied at the Architectural Association in London, Sachs completed a BA at Bennington College, Vermont in 1989. He moved to New York shortly afterwards, where he was struck by the Mondrian artworks […]