Notes

This work is singled out in Fred Schimmel Retrospective: Artist Monograph: ‘From this same period date a handful of paintings that contrast radically to (others). Instead of pale colours and layers of smooth acrylic, these works have been built up in thick, luminous impasto brushstrokes. Small Figure I and II (both 1976) represent odd little persons made up of circles for bodies and heads, their unsophisticated playfulness reminds one of Karel Appel’s fantasy child- and animal figures. Their features have been shaped in thick lashings of bright, contrasting colours, squirted from the tubes straight onto the board and plastered down with a palette knife and brush. The surfaces of these paintings invite touch as some shapes, such as the buttons on the belly of Small Figure II, are not painted but sculpted into three-dimensional green bumps with the sharp handle of the brush’ [van Zyl (ed.), 2008, page 37].

Literature

Marlize van Zyl (ed.) (2008). Fred Schimmel Retrospective: Artist Monograph, Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing. Illustrated in colour on page 37.