This incredible painting  from the 1960s was created at a time when Johnson’s works were calm  and considered minimalist displays of concentrated colour and objective design.
At this time Johnson had edited clutter from his paintings  and was concentrating on flat singular forms floating against a field.This is a  calculated and minimalist painting in which  impact is created  with colour and it is colour that has been the constant  in Michael Johnson’s work.

Through his style of reductivist painting,  Johnson evolved toward totally geometric compositions based on  symmetrical principles. In this work he is not searching for meaning in a symbolic sense but rather calibrates geometric proportions shifting the eye from one hue to another and butting colours together as separate physical shapes.

The current work has come to us from a private collection having been  purchased directly from an exhibition held in 1969 at Gallery A, Melbourne.

Michael Johnson studied at the Julian Ashton Art School and the National Art School, Sydney. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and was included in the seminal exhibitions, ‘The Field’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1968); the UNESCO Biennale, France (1968); the São Paulo Bienal, Brazil (1969); and The Australian Biennale, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1988).He is represented in all major Australian state and regional collections, New Zealand’s Chartwell Collection, and in numerous significant corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas. 

Signed: “Arthur Boyd” lower right
Provenance: The collection of Jamie Boyd, the artist’s son