Lot number 404 - Auction 154
'UNTITLED WITH JUG' (1982)

BRUCE MCLEAN 1944 Glasgow - lives and works in London 'UNTITLED WITH JUG' (1982) Mixed media on canvas. 335 x 150 cm. Verso: inscr. on the reverse. Bruce McLean, one of the most important representatives of the British post-war avant-garde, was born in Glasgow in 1944. After training at the Glasgow School of Art (1961-1963) and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London (1963-1966), where he studied under Phillip King and Anthony Caro, McLean developed a radically ironic attitude towards the established art world at an early stage. He replaced conventional materials with ephemeral substances, combined sculpture with performance, and thus questioned the status of the artwork with wit and conceptual acuity. From the mid-1970s onwards, McLean increasingly shifted his focus to painting, sculpture, and video. Untitled with Jug (1982) was created during a phase in which the artist understood the expressive energy of painting as a continuation of his performative practice. The large-format work (335 × 150 cm) unfolds as a dynamic, colour-contrasting composition: freely drawn figure contours, oscillating between abstraction and the suggestion of human forms, extend across the entire canvas. The viewer's gaze is immediately drawn to the upper left corner, where an intense red colour field dominates. In this striking section, the vessel - the 'jug' - referred to in the title appears. This motif functions less as a still life object than as a formal and emotional anchor point of the painting. Untitled with Jug is a key work within McLean's painterly oeuvre of the early 1980s: it combines the physical energy of his performances with a reflection on the medium of painting itself. Humour, irony and formal rigour combine here to create a multi-layered visual experience. McLean was a professor at the Croydon School of Art and, from 1985, at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. In 1999, he taught as a visiting professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. In 1985, he was awarded the John Moores Painting Prize. He lives and works in London. Expertise: With handsigned photo expertise by the artist, with label Galerie Maier-Hahn, Düsseldorf. Provenance: Düsseldorf private collection.