A pivotal figure in the post-war reassessment of painting, Irvin's encounter with American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate in 1956 proved transformative, liberating him from figuration and unlocking a lifelong conviction that pure colour and mark-making could articulate the full range of human feeling without recourse to the representational.

In the Nebraska series, that conviction reaches an exhilarating pitch: bold chromatic fields, animated by the tension between screen-printed colour planes and the textured relief of woodblock, coalesce into a composition at once improvisatory and rigorously felt — Irvin himself described colour not as symbol but as sensation, relative and alive, shaped entirely by its context.

Enquire with Dellasposa to discuss acquisition or arrange a private viewing.