Alexis Preller; South African 1911-1975; Abstract Composition
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Notes : Alexis Preller's magnificent and imposing large-scale mural Discovery, commissioned in 1958, was completed in 1962 after years of intensely detailed and exacting industriousness. The artist then made a most unexpected departure in both concept and handling with an exploration of European Abstract Expressionism and Tachism, the latter a French style of abstraction and gesturalism popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The Golden Fleece, painted in 1962 was the first apparently abstract composition the artist ever exhibited, representing a new dimension in Preller's enduring interest in classical Greek mythology. In Abstract Composition, painted in 1964, he embraced an even more expressive and spontaneous application of paint with visible brushwork and exquisite calligraphical markings associated with Tachism. But Preller's paintings never became pure formalist abstraction. At no time did he abandon the symbolic and metaphysical as is manifest in the present lot with its radiant cascading gold hues on black that allude to light and sacredness, two themes synonymous with Preller's oeuvre.
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