John Piper, C.H. (1903-1992)

In the preface to the 1964 exhibition catalogue Robert Melville comments, 'The typical Piper abstract painted at a time when he was scrupulously subscribing to the tenets of an international abstract school is on the verge of illustrating the idea of an empty stage with no room to spare for actors: it's a façade of coloured flats occupying the entire picture space. Adepts of absolute form might well cry out that one analogy is an analogy too many, but it seems to me that it is precisely this quality of remaining vulnerable to simile, of not turning its back on the human need to discover 'likeness' that gives Piper's early contribution to abstraction its personal accent, its saveur, perhaps its Englishness' (see exhibition catalogue, Retrospective Exhibition John Piper, London, Marlborough Fine Art, 1964, p. 4).

S.L.