(Untitled - pink)

John Peart's first solo show at Watters Gallery, Sydney fittingly coincided with the travelling exhibition Two Decades of American Painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in July 1967. The display of propeller-like paintings suggests the influence of Kenneth Noland and Frank Stella, whose shaped canvas works Peart likely would have encountered in art publications disseminated from America.

'(Untitled - pink)' 1967 galvanises the eye with its vivacious monochromatic colour and panels that splay outward and around. Peart harnessed this perceptual dynamism in a subsequent series of paintings which were subtler in colour and format, see for example 'Cool corner II' 1968, also in the AGNSW collection. Peart's dalliance with minimalism lasted only a couple of years, after which he returned to a lyrical style of abstraction. Nonetheless, Peart's body of work during 1967-68 established a legacy in Australian painting that has rarely been paralleled in terms of boldness and innovation.