Estimated Price:

   £   

Realised Price:

   £   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

Jack Hamilton Bush 1909 - 1977 Canadian acrylic polymer on canvas Zip #1 "26 x 21 inches 66 x 53.3 centimeters on verso signed, titled, dated 1968 and inscribed """"Toronto"""" Literature:Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, 2007, page 123 Provenance:Beaux-arts Internationale, Toronto Private Collection, Toronto If a painting had a voice, could sing out a jazz riff and shout its own name, Zip #1 would be heard loud and clear. One can imagine it in the artist's studio in 1968, its soprano tones rising above the deeper baritones of Jack Bush's larger canvases. As a colourist, Bush often made surprising juxtapositions in placing one rich hue next to another. His bands of thinly-applied pigment can fool the eye into believing that the artist created a rigid line between one colour and another; but on closer examination, one sees the intended imprecision of that line, a near-fuzziness that subtly adds to the life force of the work and retains the artist's graphic hand. Roald Nasgaard, i praising Bush's paintings of 1968, writes, "If there are few tensions in depth and if the vertical divisions are strictly parallel to the frame, then the horizontal bands behave less well. They may be only triflingly askew, but they tease the mind's expectation of order as deliciously and with as wry a sense of humour." Remembered by his friends and fellow artists as a talented pianist and avid jazz fan, perhaps this work was Bush's response to a joyful sound - and reflects the vitality he gained from listening to it. In 1968, the year that this superb work was painted, Bush was at the peak of his career and had gained international recognition as one of North America's foremost Colour Field painters. "