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JAMES HYMAN GALLERY
Derrick Greaves (b.1927)
Please scroll down for further information. Derrick Greaves (b.1927) The Cart signed and dated upper right Oil on canvas 152.5 x 68.5 cms (60 x 27 inches) 1953 Provenance: Formally 'The Collection of Original Works for Children' Cambridgeshire County council. Literature: James Hyman, Derrick Greaves: From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humpries, London, 2007, illustrated p.66. The two years that Greaves spent in Rome from 1952-4 were seminal for the development of his work. They may not have represented a break from the past but were certainly a great leap forward. What especially impressed Greaves was the indivisibility of life and art. Art was not confined to museums and galleries. It was all around. Churches and civic buildings contained frescos, there were mosaics on the floor and statues in the streets. He was especially struck by a visit to the Campo Santo in Pisa where the frescos were being restored and he was able to see, first hand, the pentimenti. This under-drawing, although rough, showed how even at a relatively late stage alterations were being made by the artist in response to the surface on which the fresco was being painted. He was excited by the immediacy of it all: ‘When I heard that Giotto was a joker and deliberately dropped paint on apprentices below, I could imagine that, having been a sign-painter! Reproductions had given him no sense of the works in their setting or their scale: ‘At the Royal College I thought of painting as easel painting ... In Italy pictures filled whole walls: horses, dogs, figures were life size. The difference between size and scale affected me profoundly.’ He also felt there to be a visual togetherness between people and place, a harmony brought about by the continuation of the past into the present. In colour, texture and subject matter, Greaves’s The Cart (c.1953) reflects his admiration for paintings on the sides of the Italian carts used by the agricultural workers. Greaves saw such carts when he visited Guttuso’s birthplace, Bagharia in Sicily, and recognised their influence on Guttuso in both their colour and presentation of narrative. Please click here to contact us about this item, or if you wish to buy or sell a work by this artist. | ||||||||
