Kenneth Martin: The Late Paintings

This exhibition was planned as an 80th birthday celebration for Kenneth Martin.

Sadly, Martin died in late 1984 but the exhibition remained a celebration – most particularly of the works he made in the last 10 years of his life.

Born in Sheffield in 1905, Martin was a leading figure in 20th century British abstraction, and is often associated with the legacy of Constructivism.

Many of the paintings displayed in this exhibition were part of a body of work entitled Chance and Order. For Martin, these works “combine chance and programming in the time sequence of activity. The drawings and their resulting painting and prints I have called Chance and Order. They are built of the simplest elements through a sequence of events determined by rules which allow an interplay of chance, order and, finally, aesthetic decision.”