Lot 150: Roger Cook (b. 1940)

Roger Cook (b. 1940)
Gandalf
signed, inscribed and dated 'GANDALF 1966 Roger Cook' (on the canvas-overlap)
oil on canvas, unframed
86¼ x 60½ in. (219 x 153.7 cm.)

London, Whitechapel Gallery, The New Generation, June - July 1966, no. 21.

Exhibition catalogue, The New Generation, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1966, p. 55, no. 21, illustrated.

with Rowan Gallery, London.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Artist's Resale Right ("droit de Suite"). If the Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer also agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.
Cook is concerned with the identity of the canvas, taking canvases, painting them in single colours and adding one to the other as coloured units:

'When I start painting I usually have a clear idea of the shape, arrived at from making scaled drawings. I start to draw by assembling the stretched canvases to a preconceived shape. I usually have an independent idea about the colour surface. Once I have applied the colour to the canvases it is a battle between the shape (drawing) and the colour. Both undergo changes. The painting is finished when the colour and the drawing seem to achieve independent identities and through this 'Identity in Difference' are able to relate' (Exhibition Catalogue, The New Generation, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1966, p. 56).