Blue Violet

Max Gimblett’s work has been described by Lita Barrie as ‘an eclectic blend of iconographical motifs and minimalism which represents a novel transition point where reductive modernism joins the votive object’. The genesis of Western abstraction was inextricably tied to ancient spiritual ideas in vogue in Europe at the turn of the century, even though abstraction was later redefined, notably by Clement Greenberg, as a purely formalistic pursuit. Gimblett’s early work, of which this is a significant example, was grounded in the Greenbergian pursuit of aesthetic autonomy (i.e. the work of art does not refer to anything outside itself) and explored colour via minimalism.