BASIL BEATTIE: ONWARD & UPWARD

18 Nov 2011-21 Jan 2012

Overview

James Hyman Fine Art is delighted to mark our representation of Basil Beattie by staging a major exhibition of large-scale paintings that span the last twenty-five years. The exhibition, Basil Beattie. Onward and Upward, coincides with the publication of an important new book on the artist with a collection of essays and illustrations. Building from his early engagement with Abstract Expressionism, in recent decades Beattie has increasingly adopted a system of pictographic signs; doorways, stairways, archways, ziggurats, corners and long tunnels. Despite their allusions to architectural spaces, Beattie sees these forms more as references to psychological states. Any illusion of space is also challenged by the raw physicality of the paint.