Peter Joseph has, over the course of decades, dedicated his practice to seeking the potential in constraint. He rose to critical acclaim in the 1970s for his meditative, two-colour paintings, which set one rectangle within a frame of a darker shade. These early works are characterized by perfect symmetry, where every decision about colour and proportion can be seen to be redolent of time, mood or place. While comparable to the work of Mark Rothko and Barnet Newman, Joseph’s is an anomalous strain of Minimalism: his allegiance lies as much with Renaissance masters as with his contemporaries, he says. More recently his format has departed from his established 'architecture' to divide the canvas into two planes, horizontally or vertically, wherein loose brushwork, natural tones and patches of exposed canvas tap into new feeling. As Joseph says: ‘A painting must generate feeling otherwise it is dead’.
Read MorePeter Joseph was born in London in 1929 and self-taught, he came to painting from beginnings in advertising. He lives and works in Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK. He has had solo exhibitions at Unité d’habitation Le Corbusier, Briey-en-fôret, 1998; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1994, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1983, and has been included in major group exhibitions at Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, 2010; MuHKA, Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, 2007; Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, 1997; Kunstmuseum-Wolfsburg, Germany, 1991; Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany, 1984, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1977. He won the John Player Painting Competition in 1968.
Text courtesy Lisson Gallery.
