This large Greaves painting is one of the finest we have owned, the hand and nature a major theme that he has returned to continuously throughout his life.
Greaves first came to the attention of the art world when he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1956 alongside other ‘Kitchen Sink’ painters after graduating from the Royal College of Art. Drawing upon gritty scenes of working class suburban life, the movement sought to make political comment through sullen palettes of browns, blacks, and greys.
By the end of the 1960s, however, Greaves had become disillusioned with the social realism of their earlier work. In a significant departure from his austere, representational style, he began to clear his paintings of unnecessary clutter and started implementing new stylistic and compositional techniques, with a focus on line, flat colour, and ambiguous, poetic imagery with echoes of the work of Patrick Caulfield.

Derrick Greaves is one of the most important British painters of the last half century, initially gaining acclaim in the 1950s when he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale along with the other ‘Kitchen-Sink’ painters with whom he was associated. Born in Sheffield in 1927, Greaves apprenticed for five years as a sign-writer, before winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art where he studied from 1948-52.
During the ’60s his work moved away from the social realism of his previous pieces, taking on instead a more stylised approach. His work is prominently displayed in the world’s most prestigious public galleries, including the Tate Gallery, the Contemporary Arts Society, the Arts Council of Great Brittan and the New York Public Library.
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