Artwork Information

John Milnes-Smith trained as an architect in the 1930s before he turned to painting and interest in structure continued to pervade his art. In this 1987 collage, wrinkly pieces of paper in roughly square and rectangular forms are united through muted, chalky colours evocative of British post-War housepaint. The static harmony is rudely disrupted, however, by gestural streaks of white superimposed across the picture plane, consisting of ripped-up, yet still-legible, official letters, symbols of Thatcher’s bureaucracy in 1980s Britain. A respected pioneer of British abstraction, Milnes-Smith’s late works share the absurdist sensibility of post-war German-British collage artist Kurt Schwitters, a spirit which is echoed in the composition’s anarchic title, Pink Thrust.