Lot 39: Milan Mrkusich Painting No. 1 (1950-53) oil on hardboard signed verso title inscribed and dated 1950/53 in artist's hand on label affixed verso 500 x 385mmMilan Mrkusich, whose remarkable sixty year career continues unabated into the twenty first

Milan Mrkusich Painting No. 1 (1950-53) oil on hardboard signed verso title inscribed and dated 1950/53 in artist's hand on label affixed verso 500 x 385mmMilan Mrkusich, whose remarkable sixty year career continues unabated into the twenty first century, was the first New Zealand artist to pursue abstraction continuously, undertaking his first experiments in 1946 and holding his first one person show in Auckland in 1949. He was still in his twenties when this work was painted during a period when much of his energy was going into the establishment of the design firm Bremner and Associates. Nevertheless it manifests many characteristics which marked his career prior to his becoming a full-time artist in 1958. There was little in New Zealand art at that time which offered Mrkusich examples he could relate to his own practice. He derived his knowledge and models mostly from books and reproductions from Europe. Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and other artists of the Bauhaus, Juan Miro, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth were among the artists who helped to define his direction as a painter, traces of their example being evident here in the patches of primary colour, the presence of geometric forms such as the circle and the triangle, the use of freely drawn lines to articulate the picture plane, and the use of expressive textures. Whether separately or in combination, many of these elements remained part of Mrkusich's practice in the decades ahead. This work retains considerable interest as an attractive and well-designed painting which is both an historic example of early New Zealand abstraction and an indication of directions which Mrkusich would take up and develop throughout his distinguished career.Peter Simpson