Tess Jaray: New Paintings

17 February - 25 March 2022
  • Tess Jaray, After Solitude III, 2021

    Tess Jaray

    After Solitude III, 2021 Acrylic on canvas
    101 x 90 cm | 39 3/4 x 35 3/8 in ( each )
  • Coinciding with Tess Jaray: New Paintings in Room 2, this online viewing room focusses on work from the artist's Solitude series. Solitude is a new series of ten paintings by Tess Jaray which began during the recent lockdowns. The title of the works and the prevailing sense of national isolation experienced at the time they were made, might appear to suggest an insight into the subject of the paintings. However, Jaray asserts that given the empirical solitude of an artist, well-accustomed to working alone, the titles refer more closely to what is happening on the paintings surface. The title, Solitude, offers a way in, a way to reflect on personal notions or interpretations of solitude as an experience or state of being, whether attached to these paintings or otherwise.

  • Tess Jaray, Solitude IV, 2021

    Tess Jaray

    Solitude IV, 2021 Acrylic on canvas
    110 x 90 cm | 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 in
  • If, in the Solitudes, the subject matter we see is form, geometry, colour and light, then the content seems to be us, our own states of being and experience – the ‘pace’, ‘rhythms’ and ‘instincts’ of life – such that there is very little separation between the picture and ourselves.

     

    Wells Fray-Smith

     

  • Tess Jaray, After Solitude II, 2021

    Tess Jaray

    After Solitude II, 2021 Acrylic on canvas
    110 x 68 cm | 43 1/4 x 26 3/4 in (each)
  • The works that make up the Solitude series to date combine a broad palette from bold, deep reds and strong blues right through to the softest neutral hues that are energised  by darker tones.  Her use of lilacs and mauve are reminiscent of Jaray's Serpentine paintings, that appeared to weave in and out and curve across the surface of the canvas.  In the Solitude paintings these understated muted tones demand time and attention from the viewer in a different way.  The canvas becomes a contemplative space that draws the eye in and holds it.  

     

    Mathematics, geometry and architecture continue to play a leading role in the preparatory drawings for these paintings, now working with a computer for expediency, details are erased and reduced to the barest information required to represent a depth and core structure that holds true within the parameters of the canvas.  Panels of colour are punctuated by single or multiple  vertical lines at their center embedded within the painting like structural channels leading the eye into its core. These works are at once concerned with surface while also an investigation into how the artist experiences and understands illusory space. Their flat surfaces that appear effortlessly balanced, crisp and controlled are in fact the result of an intense and exacting working process built up and refined over the past six decades. 

     

    • Tess Jaray Solitude IV, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 110 x 90 cm | 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 in
      Tess Jaray
      Solitude IV, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      110 x 90 cm | 43 1/4 x 35 3/8 in
    • Tess Jaray Solitude VI, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 105 x 91 cm | 41 3/8 x 35 7/8 in
      Tess Jaray
      Solitude VI, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      105 x 91 cm | 41 3/8 x 35 7/8 in
    • Tess Jaray Solitude V, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 110 x 91 cm | 43 1/4 x 35 7/8 in
      Tess Jaray
      Solitude V, 2021
      Acrylic on canvas
      110 x 91 cm | 43 1/4 x 35 7/8 in
    • Tess Jaray Out of Solitude, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 105 x 91 cm | 41 3/8 x 35 7/8 in
      Tess Jaray
      Out of Solitude, 2020
      Acrylic on canvas
      105 x 91 cm | 41 3/8 x 35 7/8 in
  • In the Solitudes, colour and light are inseparable. The bands themselves, though varying from blue to purple to pink to red, appear as streaks of light – apertures that are piercingly heartbreaking at the same time as they offer a promise of a world beyond. 

     

    Wells Fray-Smith

  • Tess Jaray: New Paintings

    Installation view
  • In a career spanning six decades Tess Jaray has made some of the most pertinent and memorable works in the history of British abstract art. Graduating from the Slade School of Art in 1960, by the late eighties Jaray was firmly established within the contemporary art zeitgeist.  Her exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1988 was earnestly praised by outspoken art critic Brian Sewell and numerous public commissions followed, many of an epic scale. 

     

    Jaray’s work is a reminder of just how far reaching an artist's work can impact upon wider society.  Her interest in architecture combined with her investigations of space on a two dimensional surface came full circle when she undertook some of the most ambitious public art commissions to have been executed. In 1985 the lines, shapes and forms of Jaray’s paintings took center stage in her Victoria Station Concourse (1985) as commuters and visitors stepped onto this larger than life artwork. 

     

    Her boundless vision for works such as Centenary Square  (1991) in Birmingham showed that she was able to transform an outdoor public area on a grand scale successfully enhancing and blending seamlessly with the architecture of its surroundings.  It is testament to Jaray’s ability to see beyond the paucity of her materials - standard paving blocks in a limited range of colours, towards what could be achieved.

     

    The notion that Jaray had absorbed architecture into her practice both on an illusory and physical level is an extraordinary realisation. She had taken her practice into the wider context of the the public sphere, her Victoria Station Concourse (1985) now an established, well worn part of London architecture itself, anticipated a trend for public art that would enhance its locale without disrupting the area or dividing opinion over its legitimacy, as much of public art does.  This merging of abstract painting with architecture blurred the boundaries between the impenetrability of contemporary art among the general public without losing any of the appeal of Jaray’s distinctive style.  Architecture has remained an enduring inspiration in Jaray’s work and her mastery for representing physical space in two dimensions has long since reached a preternatural understanding. 

     

    It is poignant that in recognition of Jaray’s dedication to architecture she was made an Honorary Fellow of RIBA (Royal Institute for British Architects) in 1995. Jaray continues to make paintings in her North London studio working predominantly in series.

  • Public Commissions

  • It took many years before I started to grasp that creating our own space is in many ways how we define ourselves, how we protect ourselves, how we reflect both the world around us and relate our inner selves to that

     

    Tess Jaray interviewed for Studio International by Janet McKenzie

  • Final Notations – Tess Jaray

    A film by bluetribe.
  • About Tess Jaray

    About Tess Jaray

    Tess Jaray was born in Vienna in 1937, and has lived and worked in London since 1954. She studied at St Martin's School of Art and Design and then at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she later taught between 1968 and 1999. Over the course of her career she has exhibited in solo and group shows all over the world and written extensively, including The Blue Cupboard: Inspirations and Recollections, published in 2015. Tess Jaray’s paintings belong to museums and private collectors at an international scale with her most recent exhibition Return to Vienna: The Paintings of Tess Jaray at Secession placing her at the very top of her career.