LONDON.- This presentation at Messums Org London from 14 February – 16 March will be the first in a series of exhibitions and events dedicated to John Golding’s significant contribution to our understanding of the history of abstract art. It launches ahead of the major retrospective of John Golding’s work opening on 9 May 2024 at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Mexico City.

As a painter, and with a career spanning nearly 60 years, John Golding’s oeuvre was rich and diverse, progressing through figuration into a combination of lyrical, informal and hard-edged abstraction. He was a master of the colour field and is perhaps best-known for his large canvases produced from the 1970s onwards – dynamic, rhythmic works which exude colour, energy and painterly freedom. Many of these paintings are now represented in notable public collections. This exhibition displays a selection of works from this lyrical abstract phase – radiant, expressive images which engage with folding light, colour, form and scale. Reflective of the human experience, these works relate to landscape, the body, light, space and the elements.

Alongside his career as a painter, Golding is recognised for his significant contribution as an art historian, teacher, and curator. His research focused on the origins and development of abstraction culminating in his credo on abstract art entitled Paths to the Absolute (2000). This exhibition continues to mark and celebrate his legacy.

John Golding, 1929-2012

Messums Org are delighted to announce our representation of the estate of pre-eminent abstract painter John Golding. John Golding was an Anglo-Mexican artist, brought up from early childhood in Mexico. Golding’s mother’s family was the first British family in Mexico, arriving in the early 19th Century before the independence from Spain.