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Derrick Greaves (b.1927)
Bird and Vase (Diptych)

Bird and Vase (Diptych) by Derrick Greaves (b.1927)

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Derrick Greaves (b.1927)
Bird and Vase (Diptych)

Charcoal on paper
92.5 x 59 cms (36½ x 23¼ inches)
1971

Literature:
Derrick Greaves: The Pleasures of Drawing, James Hyman Gallery, London, 2005, (cat. 7), illustrated (un-numbered).
James Hyman, Derrick Greaves:From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humphries, London, 2007, illustrated p.107 .

The drawings of Bird and Vase Diptych (1971) are reminiscent of other related works produced by Greaves during this period, and thus share similar qualities. This is particularly prevalent in the physical execution of the paintings, which are produced with thinned acrylic.

In Derrick Greaves: From Kitchen-Sink to Shangri-La (Lund Humphries, 2007) James Hyman describes the compositional and stylistic elements of these drawings:

"The drawings Bird and Vase (1971) (plate 78) are concerned with movement and stasis and also with presence and absence. Are we shown a vase and a bird as the title suggests, or merely their shadows? For all the monumentality, what is depicted is a shadow rather than the bird itself and this encourages us to read the lipped vase as similarly lacking in substance. Complicating this is the relative substantiality of the charcoal ground, which has been so worked and scratched into that it has a greater materiality than the things depicted. Braque’s bird had been let loose from the confining atelier, its flattened form well illustrating Greaves’s rejection of modelling and the illusionistic creation of volume and weight. This would pave the way for the linearity and lightness of his later work with its interpenetration of forms and use of transparency." (Page 108)
nb images are wrong way round

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