Anthony Green Hon RBA NEAC RA Hon RI

Anthony Green makes large, irregularly shaped pictures, in oil paint on battened, primed boards. In love, in Paris, on a French government scholarship, and soon to return to marry Miss Cozens-Walker, our hero resolved to paint about his virginity and married love, rather than art about art. He would make his contribution to Modernism by telling his small private story in pictures – la petite histoire par un petit maître – simply a little history by a jobbing artist. Figurative art would still be relevant. The pictures in his mind’s eye had no edges. His compositions need not be traditional rectangles. His first shaped painting was made in 1964, influenced by images seen in Early Italian Gothic arches and French Romanesque tympanums. Perhaps his developing compositions might have irrelevant perimeters? Paintings fashioned by the multiplicity of pictures in his memory. Art would simply serve his needs.