Signed, titled and dated on the reverse
In Praise of the Right Angle (1973) began as a single large horizontal painting that was effectively a diptych in conception. On the right was a vase with the overlapping form of a flower on a stalk, coming in at a right angle, and on the left is the same vase and filling it is the same flower, no longer attached to a stalk. However, Greaves subsequently felt that this two-part painting was too obvious, cutting it in half and keeping the left hand part as an independent painting. This radical process of cropping individual canvases and splitting up diptychs and triptychs lessened the literary quality of these paintings, returning them to the realm of pictorial imagination and, despite their clarity of form, reinforcing their allusiveness.
Provenance
Private Collection, London.
History
Pop Classical: Derrick Greaves Paintings from the 70's, James Hyman Gallery, London, 30 March - 28 April 2006.
Literature
Derrick Greaves: Paintings and Drawings 1952 - 2002, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2003, (cat. 22), illustrated p.17.
James Hyman, Derrick Greaves:From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humphries, London, 2007, illustrated p. 105.