Richard Lin

(British, 1933-2011)

Untitled 45.6 x 71.2 cm (18 x 28 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired directly by the present owner in the early 1970s
Private Collection, U.K.

Based in London from the early 1950s until 2002, Lin had his first solo exhibition soon after graduating from the London Polytechnic in 1959. His earliest works display the influences of western abstraction as well as expressive Chinese calligraphy, but it was not long before Lin started working in a highly reductive, formal minimalism, and for this he quickly received recognition.

His style became increasingly austere in the 1960s with more obvious lines and a gradual reduction in colour until only shades of white remained in Lin's palette with the slightest inclusion of yellow, red, blue or aluminium strips. This resulted in his celebrated signature style seen in the 'White Series'. He was visited in London by the Spanish master Joan Miro who said of Lin's work, "In the world of white, Lin is without equal. The series continued into the 1980s when the artist announced that "painting is dead", and moved onto sculptural works.

Lin is often compared with "minimalist" artists of the 1960s and 70s, artists whose inspirations were in turn as diverse as Bauhaus design and architecture, the Suprematist paintings of Kazimir Malevich, and the avant-garde compositions of John Cage and LaMonte Young. For Lin, his works were no doubt in part influenced by his study of architecture, but he spoke most often of Chinese traditional aesthetics, as well as of Daoist philosophical and spiritual concerns. He has stated, "Stillness is very important to me. Painting is my religious expression. It's my altarpiece, something untouched by human hands. Therefore all gestures disappeared."

This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné currently being prepared by The Estate of Richard Lin Show Yu and we are grateful to them for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.