Magenta

Gunter Christmann was a German-born artist formerly associated with Central Street Gallery in Sydney. Central Street Gallery was among the first advocates of formalism in Australian art during the mid to late 1960s. Christmann's 'Magenta' was included in an exhibition of experimental works based on different colours of the spectrum. In this work, Christmann has allowed the watered-down medium to run and bleed into the canvas, resulting in chanceful, fluid forms and varying degrees of monochrome. The thin overlaid vertical strips see Christmann attempt to synthesise his former hard-edge style with action painting - a method he would resolve in his aerial 'sprankle' paintings from late 1969. Magenta once hung in the bedroom of Australian author Patrick White, who donated the work to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1979.