Men of plasticine and women of the giant goddess: because the brilliant and bizarre art of Ken Kiff is giving a second glance | Art

KEn Kiff was a strange brilliant in Post-Seconda World War British painting. In the works that sing with color and consistency, it has created shaky fairy tales in which the eyes and the nose slip around the faces, the animals tower the mountains and dreams, the desire, the search for men are made touchly foolish. Looking at great modernists such as Klee and Miró, Kiff made the color a distinctive principle, mixing abstraction with recurring symbols demolished by a private mythology that included birds, salami, mountains, water, women similar to the goddess and the “little man”, a chimen area with a full -wrap -up body as plastic, which walks a lonely street. His was a vision without bombs on agony and the ecstasy of life, idiosyncratic as comparable and human.

When Kiff died at the age of 65 in 2001, his reputation was that of an artist of past artists, whose sincere dedication to his vehicle and the creative process was very far from the arch, a brazen conceptual production of the then dominant Ybas. Now, however, the appreciation for his personal work prolificially produced is growing again. “He speaks to a younger generation, in part in terms of his mix of abstraction and figuration,” says Ella-Rose Harrison, director of the Hales Gallery, where a new exhibition looks back to his 18 months from 1992 to 1993 as “associated artist” in residence from London National Gallery. “There is also a different commitment with its themes”, he adds, “bringing the mythical into daily or psychologically loaded space”.

Kiff was the second artist that the National Gallery invited to respond to his art historical giants and was a prestigious concert. Paula Rego was the first and Kiff was followed by Peter Blake. Yet he had reservations. “It was not pro-institution,” says Anna, Kiff’s daughter. “He was deeply aware that he was a very male environment. He was a background of the working class and it was not his area of ​​comfort.” For an artist who glorized in color, the National Gallery collection was also very brown.

Working on site in a basement study with his vast collection of cassettes that played everything, from the baroque harpsichord to jazz, Kiff went in search of what he called “the essence” of the paintings. He didn’t do many sketches there, but rather “he looked intensely painted and still and again”, explains Anna. What prompted him to work by artists including Rubens, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Pisanello or Giovanni Di Paolo is always fresh and surprising. He had a particular thing for the trees of Rubens. He paid attention to the physicality of art, whether it was wood or a touch of gold pigment. A splash of color by a muddy Renaissance landscape could inspire the dominant element in his work.

Sometimes, his paintings adhere closely to the originals, adapting themes and figures that have made themselves with his own mythologies. Giovanni Battista, The Hunter Sant’Eustace or The Hermit San Girolamo could be higher cousins ​​of Kiff lonely traveler. To others, his paintings seem to overturn the hypotheses of the past, as with the woman who looks at a murder, inspired by the brutal all -male scene of Bellini the assassination of San Pietro Martire. Kiff takes the blue from a waste of heaven in the forest setting otherwise washed by Bellini to create a blue vision, in which a small couple of skirts is observed by a giant woman, sad and discharged.

Kiff later wrote that he approached the National Gallery project while doing all his work, as “many intertwined thoughts” that were not visual non -verbal. “A painting does not become a painting because it complies with the rules of what should be a painting,” he continued, “but because” thought “or” understanding “happened.”

Ken Kiff: The National Gallery Project is at the Hales Gallery, London, May 24th

Pushed to abstraction: five works of the exhibition

White tree, large face, 1990-1996
Kiff left the tough to paint here visible. Anna remembers having found him in line with “the quality of darkness, the brown you find in a lot of old master painting”. The tree was inspired by Rubens but the face – literally in pieces – belongs to the modern world.

Woman looking at a murder, 1996 (pictured at the top of the article)
This blue meditation shows how Kiff has used color as a structuring principle, with its echoing shapes and its shades of water. He also underlines his interest in the bleeding between representation and abstraction, with midnight of midnight ink in the background that suggests a cave or intangible dark thoughts.

After Giovanni Di Paolo, 1992-1993
This is one of the paintings of Kiff who attacks his inspiration from the source closely, the San Giovanni Battista by Giovanni Di Paolo who retires to the desert. Its elements are close to those who was already exploring in his work, from giant flowers or huge mountains that challenge the isolated traveler to scale scale.

Master of St Giles, 1994
In addition to the paintings, Kiff also produced prints inspired by his time at the National Gallery, like this wooden cut that was teeming with earthy life that seemed to be works by an anonymous 16th century artist known for having represented Saint Giles’ friendship with a deer. “This press includes so many things that has found important,” says Anna, “including our relationship with the environment”.

Castle that stands from the sea, 1993
This incision shows off the famous vivid Kiff palette and talks about the creative process, with its castle born from the waters of the sea. The sun is a recurring symbol in its work with lighting or inspiration connotations. This is not Apollo, however; Striscia together remembering one of the other favorite tropes of KIFF: The Salamander.