Mykhne - Greece, Wild Cacti, 1969
Oil on canvas
Signed, titled and dated, verso
50.8 x 61.0 cm (20 x 24 inches)

Provenance:
Private collection, England

Notes:
Mykhne-Greece, Wild Cacti is unusual among Nicholson’s works. Here we are treated to an extremely bold and dynamic composition in which Nicholson plays on the contrasts between the sharp outlines of the cacti in the foreground and the soft hills and clouds behind. The inclusion of the two branched arms of the cacti from the lower left of the composition at first appears to be a quirky addition to the painting. However, this feature is very much in keeping with Nicholson’s continual concern with the balance of ‘far and near, close and distant’ in her work. Here in a scene from the open Greek countryside her common inclusion of a window frame in the immediate foreground of her paintings is replaced by the strong form of the cacti from which the viewer’s eye is launched into the distant horizon of the picture.
POA