UNTITLED
signed and dated JOHN PLUMB / 1960 on the reverse
oil and coloured tape on board
122 x 122cm; 48 x 48in
unframed

Provenance
Peter Cochrane, London

Plumb studied at the Byam School of Art, the Luton School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design in London, under Victor Pasmore and William Turnbull. From the mid-1950's he produced paintings with large fields of a single colour, including narrow strips on the edge of different colours, reflecting his admiration for American Colour Field painting, particularly the primary colour palette and sharp, bisecting lines employed by Barnett Newman; work he would have seen first hand in 1959 at the Tate Gallery's landmark exhibition The New American Painting.

The following year - when he painted the present work - his work was featured in the ground breaking exhibition Situation at the RBA galleries together with Robyn Deny and John Hoyland (lot 83) and some twenty other artists. Important group exhibitions since have included British Painting 1974 at the Hayward Gallery; Art 90 at Olympia, and Art & the 60s: This Was Tomorrow at Tate Britain in 2004. His first one-man exhibition was at Gallery One in 1957, others have included at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in 1967 and the London Arts Gallery in 1970. Plumb taught at Luton School of Art, 1955-61, Maidstone College of Art, 1961-6, and Bennington College, Vermont, 1968-9. He became Senior Lecturer in Painting at the Central School of Art and Design, London 1969-1982.