22
MILAN MRKUSICH - Centre with Three Elements
Estimate:
$70,000 - $90,000
Passed
Live Auction
Important & Rare Art
ARTIST
MILAN MRKUSICH (1925 - 2018)
Size
87 x 87 cm
Description
Oil on canvas
Condition
To request a condition report, please contact us at auctions@artcntr.co.nz or phone +64 9 379 4031
Signature
Signed, inscribed Centre with Three Elements& dated 1965
Provenance
Private Collection, Auckland
International Art Centre, Important, Early & Rare New Zealand Art, Auckland, 14/07/2011
International Art Centre, Important, Early & Rare New Zealand Art, Auckland, 14/07/2011
Literature
For six and a half decades, Milan Mrkusich has been at the forefront of modernism in New Zealand. From the outset, he painted abstract pictures, not the landscape subjects that preoccupied his contemporaries. Mrkusich had no interest in representations and symbols of New Zealandness, finding inspiration in the innovations of European and American art, and seeking the universal rather than the merely local. This was not an easy path. In the early part of his career, there was virtually no art market in New Zealand, and certainly no market for such radical paintings as Mrkusich's.
Mrkusich therefore had to compete for his time with more profitable ventures, such as his work for the pioneering design firm Brenner Associates. But in 1958, when Brenner ceased to be profitable and closed its doors, Mrkusich had more time to focus on painting. As a result, the following decade saw a series of bold and astonishingly rapid changes to the style and format of his paintings. Centre with Three Elements is an outstanding example from this rich and productive phase of Mrkusich's career.
The Elements series of 1965 was one of the most resolved series of work Mrkusich had produced. The dominant motif, an interlocking circle and square, had been present in the preceding Emblem series, but now it became a more thoroughgoing system. Typically, the system consists of a square support divided into tour quadrants, each containing a circular element. Centre with Three Elements, though, is exceptional in its variations on this theme.
Moving inwards from the square formed by the edges of the painting, one encounters a circle, divided in half horizontally, and then four squares each containing three circular elements. A further unusual feature is the tiny tilted square, or diamond, placed at the very centre of the painting, linked in scale and hue to two round dots that mark the centre of two of the circular elements. These seem to hint at what was to come in the Diagram series of 1966, where such dots were often dispersed across a large field of colour.
By the time he painted Centre with Three Elements, Mrkusich had familiarised himself with the ideas of the psychologist Carl Jung. Jung's belief that the combined circle and square was a symbol of harmony or unity would have reinforced Mrkusich's own approach to these forms.
Centre with Three Elements is not a composition. It does not ask the viewer to puzzle over an arbitrary or idiosyncratic distribution of shapes. Rather, there is a logical system, which, in tandem with sumptuous and subtle colour, frees the viewer to speculate on higher, more universal, even spiritual, levels of feeling.
Mrkusich therefore had to compete for his time with more profitable ventures, such as his work for the pioneering design firm Brenner Associates. But in 1958, when Brenner ceased to be profitable and closed its doors, Mrkusich had more time to focus on painting. As a result, the following decade saw a series of bold and astonishingly rapid changes to the style and format of his paintings. Centre with Three Elements is an outstanding example from this rich and productive phase of Mrkusich's career.
The Elements series of 1965 was one of the most resolved series of work Mrkusich had produced. The dominant motif, an interlocking circle and square, had been present in the preceding Emblem series, but now it became a more thoroughgoing system. Typically, the system consists of a square support divided into tour quadrants, each containing a circular element. Centre with Three Elements, though, is exceptional in its variations on this theme.
Moving inwards from the square formed by the edges of the painting, one encounters a circle, divided in half horizontally, and then four squares each containing three circular elements. A further unusual feature is the tiny tilted square, or diamond, placed at the very centre of the painting, linked in scale and hue to two round dots that mark the centre of two of the circular elements. These seem to hint at what was to come in the Diagram series of 1966, where such dots were often dispersed across a large field of colour.
By the time he painted Centre with Three Elements, Mrkusich had familiarised himself with the ideas of the psychologist Carl Jung. Jung's belief that the combined circle and square was a symbol of harmony or unity would have reinforced Mrkusich's own approach to these forms.
Centre with Three Elements is not a composition. It does not ask the viewer to puzzle over an arbitrary or idiosyncratic distribution of shapes. Rather, there is a logical system, which, in tandem with sumptuous and subtle colour, frees the viewer to speculate on higher, more universal, even spiritual, levels of feeling.
