May 78 (magenta cup)

Details

Ben Nicholson, O.M. (1894-1982)
May 78 (magenta cup)
ink, oil and oil wash, shaped, on the artist's prepared board, in the artist's frame
9½ x 12½ in. (24.2 x 31.8 cm.)

Provenance

with Waddington Galleries, London, circa 1982, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

J. Lewison, exhibition catalogue, Ben Nicholson, London, British Council, Tate Gallery, 1993, pp. 203, 237, no. 133, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Waddington & Tooth Galleries, Ben Nicholson recent paintings on paper, October 1978, no. 52.
London, British Council, Tate Gallery, Ben Nicholson, October 1993 - January 1994, no. 133: this exhibition travelled to St Etienne, Musée d'Art Moderne, February - May 1994.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Brought to you by

Albany Bell

abell@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2738

Lot Essay

In earlier works Nicholson had used magenta as small patches of colour, but in the present work it is the dominant pigment. In an undated letter at the end of the 1940s, Winifred Nicholson wrote to Ben Nicholson about his use of magenta: 'I don't know whether I can introduce you to my family friend magenta - she's a person like blue and yellow, not just a transition between the wide intervals as you use her - the sort of minor key between two chords that resolves them - she's a person, very alive and potent and fugitive and transparent' (J. Lewison, op. cit., p. 237).

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