WILLIAM SCOTT RA (1913-1989) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »
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Gouache on paper

Signed W Scott lower right

34.70cm wide    24.70cm high    (13.66 inches wide  9.72 inches high)

Private Collection of Sir Robert Mayer

London, The Hanover Gallery, 20 Gouaches 1952, 2May - 1 June 1962, catalogue number 19, on loan from Sir Robert Mayer

William Scott, the Irish Scottish artist, visited New York in 1953 on his way back from a teaching post in Canada and met the rising American superstars of his generation: Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. He was the first from Britain to do so. Clearly he had been following their progress, as in the previous summer of 1952 Scott had made a series of gouaches in which he experimented with purely abstract forms. Most of these works, including Blue Abstract, were exhibited at Hanover Gallery in London in 1953.

This close encounter with Abstract Expressionism made a huge impact on William Scott’s art. Throughout his career the original composition of his still-lives and nude paintings were balanced between abstraction and figuration.