Experimented Paintings By Frank Gross

Press, Volume C, Issue 29565, 14 July 1961, Page 15

Experimented Paintings By Frank Gross

Frank Gross has designated his one-man exhibition at the Durham street art gallery as a collection of *'experimental" work, and it does indeed show Mr Gross experimenting with style and technique to a much greater degree than one bad become accustomed to expect from him. The basis of much of Mr Gross’s work continues to be decorative linear formalisation of either landscape subjects in flowing but often flaccid curves or urban and industrial subjects in rectilineal manner. But in other paintings he experiments with evocations of light effects, experiments with manipulating wet, viscous paint on the canvas and uses the Jackson Pollock dribble technique. Action painting suits him well, for his normal reticence of technique and the extreme freedom of the medium interact so that the results are controlled. However, like many who practise this technique, Mr Gross

tends to create all-over patterns rather than compositions, which is surprising in a painter aware of composition almost to the exclusion of other plastic values in his other work. Mr Gross shows little interest in colour, generally restricting himself to russets, muted greens and blues. Sometimes this scheme is enlivened by the addition of lemon yellow, but colour nearly always fills a minor place in his work, never assuming a structural role and in some eases weakening the linear composition. In his moat characteristic ; work Mr Gross aims at re- : ducing a subject to it* essential linear rhythms—a process of simplification in ; which the presence of coni ventlonal perspective is sometimes Incongruous—as i the basis of his compositions. . In his drawings he achieves • this with more clarity and i directness than in his paint- . Ings, and in these recent . works this is done with a . lighter touch than before, s —J.N.K.