Maria Lalić
Maria Lalić is a painter whose practice makes reference to the material and historical
bases of painting as the underpinning structure for each of three extensive series of work.
In the first group, the ‘Colour and Metal’ paintings, panels of metal are juxtaposed with
monochrome panels painted with named artists oil colours derived from the adjacent
metal. The facture of these paintings makes specific reference to ‘objectness’ through a
relationship with extant work known as ‘Minimalism’ in the UK and US and ‘Konkret Art’ in
Europe.
On finding a Winsor and Newton colour chart that categorised colour into six eras from
Cave, through Egyptian, Greek, Italian C18th/19th and C20th, Lalić began work on the
second group, called the ‘History Paintings’, using the ‘inventions’ of pigment as a
readymade structure to explore time These apparently monochrome paintings are in fact
polychrome and consist of many layered glazes of oil paint, era by era. The pigments are
heavy with associations of their time of discovery, for example the four colours listed under ‘Cave’ are derived from fire and earths that speak eloquently of their time. Her notion of ‘History’ in relation to time is threefold: the readymade structure through the Winsor and Newton chart, the desire for pure abstraction of sensation through colour and the ‘Monochrome’ in C20th painting and the concrete, physical process of the making of each painting, evident on the edges of the canvas.
In the third series, the ’Landscape Paintings’, Lalić explores the possibilities of
contemporary landscape painting. In each of these two panel paintings one panel is
painted in oil paint made from earth she has collected in specific locations and the other in an eponymously named artists’ oil colour, for example oil paint made from earth collected
in Argenteuil, France, is painted on the lower panel whilst the upper panel is painted with
commercially manufactured artists oil colour ‘French Ochre’. The size of the painting is the
same as Monet’s painting ‘The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil’ 1872 in the collection
of the National Gallery, London. Together they pay homage to a familiar, extant landscape
painting. Additionally Maria Lalić continues to work on an extensive group of drawings combining in numerous ways all 19 grades of graphite pencil, 10H - 8B.
Lalic's work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in public and private
museums and galleries throughout the UK and Europe and in the US and New Zealand
and her work is represented in public and private collections. Examples include
'Compendium Drawing' in the V&A collection; Colour and Metal works in the Arts Council
collection and a permanent installation in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art
Gallery, Exeter and six History Paintings in the Tate Collection and were exhibited in
exhibition at Tate Modern in 2004 - 2005 and 2016-2025. Other public collections include
the Contemporary Art Society, Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, the Karl Ernst Osthaus
Museum,Hagen, the Museum fur Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, the Department of Trade and
Industry, Deutsche Bank. She was shortlisted for the Jerwood Painting Prize 1997.
Maria Lalić was born in South Yorkshire and studied Painting at Central School of Art and
Design (BA Hons), Chelsea School of Art (MA) and was Fellow in Painting at Bath
Academy of Art 1977-8. She taught at Bath Academy of Art (later known as Bath Spa
University) from 1978 - 2018 and was Professor in Painting from 1998.
Gallery
