George Johnson’s Captivating Canvasses Exhibited

Nelson-born George Johnson is a giant of Australian “geometric abstraction” and his work, along with that of local heavyweights Jon Plapp and Trevor Vickers, was recently exhibited at Melbourne’s Nancy Sever Gallery.

In a review of the show, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sasha Grishin writes: “[In association with Melbourne’s Charles Nodrum Gallery, the three artists were] brought together in a challenging group exhibition.

“At 71, Vickers is the youngster in the group, Johnson is the veteran at 88, while Plapp died in 2006 aged in his late 60s. Their vintage is important, not so much because they emerged as artists in the 1960s and 1970s when colour field abstraction was in vogue, but because they also all turned to early 20th-century founders of geometric abstraction, including the Russian Suprematists, European Constructivists and the Dutch De Stijl artists.

“All three have their own distinctive artistic language. What they share is the basic commitment to abstraction and to the use of geometric shapes. Johnson studied under the Bauhaus emigre artist, Theo Schoon, and by the time he settled in Melbourne in 1951, was already drawn into abstraction.

“Conscious of the heritage of Kazimir Malevich, Johnson loves to suspend a form in a void and then allow it to revolve on its axis. His Dual Circular Theme (Senior) (2005), is a superb and captivating canvas of great colouristic subtlety. He is also an artist who has progressively improved with time; in his most recent works there is a deceptive simplicity which masks a great boldness in thought and sophistication in technique.”

Original article by Sasha Grishin, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 14, 2014.