John Banting (1902-1972)

By contrast, this is a typical Banting. It gathers most of the motifs used in his other paintings and drawings: the trellis/curtain top left, the accordion-like screen top right, the sprawling shape on the ground representing a body complete with an eye, several prismatic shapes and, to contrast with and add to them, floral shapes - not to forget the bird at the centre of the "horizon"line, the emblem of the imagination and freedom. The bird seems to be lifting a veil, another sign of liberation. To be noticed, too, is the contrast he wants to draw our attention to, between the flowers and leaves which are DRAWN (in the sprawling shape), and the flowers and leaves which are "REAL" outside that shape (which could also be that of a huge eye being on the point of desintegration). It is a nice, well-balanced, colourful synthesis of his main favourite forms. We here again stand between the organic and the inorganic, living elements of growth and geometric forms, both emblematizing the tension at work in the mind and in life. Sometimes in Banting the forces of dry formalism (when shapes are only geometrical) and death rule supreme. Not here, where the tension is more formal and subtly so, than emotional.
MR