Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Black to White - Landscape with Figure
signed with initials 'K.V.' (lower right)
pastel
35.6 x 27.3 cm. (14 x 10 3/4 in.)
Executed in 1960
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private Collection, U.K.

Vaughan had used wax crayon as early as the 1940s. Then in 1959 he discovered oil pastels while he was teaching at the Iowa State University Art Department. He was instantly inspired by their rich, density of colour and the immediate manner in which they could be applied; they left no dusty residue, nor did they smudge like traditional artists' chalks. He continued to use oil pastels for the next two decades. Since 'they were then rare in England. He explained to Prunella Clough that they were 'waterproof, impervious to everything, can be rolled, stamped on, eaten!' (Malcolm Yorke, Keith Vaughan, his Life and Work, London, 1990, p.189).

In Black to White - Landscape with Figure Vaughan explores his primary theme of a male nude in a landscape and utilizes around ten different oil pastels to build up an abstract arrangement of forms encasing the figure. The chromatic arrangement of cobalts, indigos and azures are offset by more dominant blacks and other earthy hues. The blocks of landscape colour penetrate the figure which assists in incorporating it into his environment.

Vaughan exhibited fourteen such oil pastels as part of his 1962 retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry. His new book Keith Vaughan: The Graphic Art, is to be published by Pagham Press.
This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: AR
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