Robert O'Rorke (b. 1945)

O'Rorke graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1969, and has had several one-man exhibitions; the most recent being at the Piers Feetham Gallery in 2016. He has also widely exhibited in many mixed shows including the International Art Fair, Los Angeles, the Royal Academy, London, the London Art Fair, Islington, the International Art Fair, Salzburg, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and the London Group.

Highway is a powerful painting and was executed in 1969, during the Vietnam War. The lower quadrant of the composition contains images of captured American airmen sitting isolated, separated from one another by the clear black compositional structure of their individual prison cells. The artist's use of vigorous, gestural brushwork in the centre of the composition, combined with the lettering, reinforces the prisoners' sense of helplessness. This feeling is further reinforced by the image of the American car, which O'Rorke explains was to echo 'the isolation of the captured airmen'. In Highway the influence of the Pop Artist's Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns is evident through elements such as the artist's use of collage and the inclusion of the boxes in the lower part of the composition, which echoes Jasper John's use of the box in his famous Target with Four Faces (1955, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

We are very grateful to the artist for his assistance in cataloguing this work, and lot 78.