There it is

Location

Country: Italy
City: Rome
Place: British Embassy

Christopher Le Brun is a celebrated British painter, printmaker and sculptor. His practice since 2020 has focused on a series of abstractions, involving dense accretions of colour and gesture. His glowing surfaces, containing passages both luminous and numinous, are what he describes as ‘primary’ responses to the act of painting. He elaborates: This painting was originally part of a diptych, a form I have used in many recent works both in print and paint, and - alongside the multi-panel body of work - it can stand as representative of my practice of the last few years. At a certain point, and after a lot of comings and goings recorded in the dates on the reverse, it became self-sufficient and set off alone. The title came about when I made the thin pale blue horizontal line midway up the painting. At once it gathered together all the colour, composition and the long process that had brought me to this point and, stepping back, the phrase just suggested itself: Well ...There it is.

Born in Portsmouth, Christopher Le Brun trained at the Slade and Chelsea Schools of Art, London. In his early career, he was a double prizewinner at the John Moores exhibitions (1978, 1980), also showing in the Venice Biennale (1980) and the exhibition ‘Zeitgeist’ (1982) at the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin. Solo exhibitions have been held at the Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China (2021); Albertz Benda, New York, USA (2020); Lisson Gallery, Shanghai, China (2019); Lisson Gallery, London, UK (2018); the Southampton Art Gallery, Southampton, UK (2018); Wolfson College, Cambridge, UK (2018); Albertz Benda, New York, NY, USA (2017); The Gallery at Windsor, Vero Beach, FL, USA (2017); Colnaghi, London, UK (2015); Friedman Benda, New York, NY, USA (2014); New Art Centre, Wiltshire, UK (2010) and The New Art Gallery, Walsall, UK (2008). His work is in many major museum collections including Tate Gallery, London, UK; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; the British Museum, London, UK; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland; The Whitworth, Manchester, UK and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

canvas, paint, oil, oil paint, oil painting

Artist

Christopher Le Brun (1951 - )

Title

There it is

Date

2021

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 155.5 cm; width: 110.3 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, January 2022

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 6 January 2022

GAC number

19032