Lot 77: Milan Mrkusich Blue Achromatic acrylic on custom wood title inscribed signed and dated 1980 verso 1600 x 1220mm By 1980 Mrkusich had long assimilated his models and sources into a refined, consistent and meticulous practice all his own. The presence

Milan Mrkusich Blue Achromatic acrylic on custom wood title inscribed signed and dated 1980 verso 1600 x 1220mm By 1980 Mrkusich had long assimilated his models and sources into a refined, consistent and meticulous practice all his own. The presence of the term 'achromatic' in Mrkusich's titles refers to the presence of black, white or grey in a painting. Though not colours themselves, black, white in combination with primary colours (red, yellow and blue) or secondary colours (orange, green and purple) made from mixing two primaries, make possible an infinity of shades of colour. In Blue: Acromatic, a superb specimen of Mrkusich's mature work (painted in his mid-fifties) it is the relationship between areas of pure colour and the simple geometry of vertical and horizontal lines by which the rectangular plane of the painting is divided up which creates the aesthetic effect. Colour, line and surface are all the elements Mrkusich needs to create such serene and authoritative objects for sensory contemplation and mental reflection.Mrkusich is an artist who generally lets his pictures speak for themselves without need of explanation or commentary. Nevertheless, his statement of 1972 (quoted in Milan Mrkusich: a decade further on 1974-1983 Auckland City Art Gallery, 1985) affords a helpful insight into this and many other of his works: 'A painting shows the facts of its own particular condition My way is to begin with an unambiguous form... The rightness of truth is self evident in the form itself. In the end, words fail to say what intuitional factors bring about the changes in this tautological condition which result in a work of art. Painting comes from an intuitional process of work, the purpose of which is to show a TRUTH' p. 11). Mrkusich's radiant geometry, as in this awesomely accomplished example, marks out a pure limit for one end of the spectrum in the art of painting in this country.Peter Simpson