Maria Lalić was born in 1952 in Sheffield, England. She lives and works in Bath, England..
The artist’s three discreet but related painting series have developed over years of persistent practice and meticulous research. In the last 25 years, works from her series “Colour and Metal”, “History Paintings” and “Landscape Paintings” have been shown at Renate Bender’s gallery. In 2014 she began to work on a second series of ‘History Paintings’ called the “Monochrome History Paintings". In these she delves again into the historical and temporal background of pigments. Color is located in its era of invention – Cave to C20th – and the focus in these is on each separate color across all eras - Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Purple, Brown, Black and White. When completed this series will total 45 paintings and each will be 85 x 85 cm.
„Landscape Paintings“
For her series “Landscape Paintings” the artist has investigated the names of painting colours or pigments – for example, “Berlin Blue“ or “English Green” – and referred to a famous landscape painting of the time (here Sisley's “The Bridge at Argenteuil”). From these locations she has collected earth, which she ground in her studio to the finest pigment and then used it to paint the bottom part of her new paintings.
„Colours and Metals“
The "Colours and Metals" series is an extensive and ongoing group of multi panelled paintings that juxtapose different colours with the metals from whose oxides they are derived.
„History Paintings“
Maria Lalić began to work on the original series of the "History Paintings" in 1995, taking their premise from a colour chart produced by the paint manufacturers Winsor and Newton in which colour is grouped according to six era’s of invention – Cave, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, C18/19th and C20th. The 53 paintings that complete this group build layer upon layer of oil glazes of pure colour in rotation, all the colours from each era completing an apparent monochrome, whilst in fact being polychromes. Their sizes vary and related to their colour group regardless of their era – all Reds 150 x 150, all Blues 120 x 120, all Yellows 60 x 60, all Greens 50 x 50 and so on. Six of the original paintings "History Paintings" are in the collection of Tate.
Lalić then began working on the second group of ‘History Paintings’. These new paintings are ‘Monochromes’. All eight colour groups within the original Winsor and Newton paint chart – red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black, white and brown – are painted in layer upon layer of oil glazes, built chronologically. She thinks of the intensity of these paintings as absolutes, making the bluest Blue, the reddest Red and so on.
The third series of the "History Painting", again monochrome, are all the variations derived from the 8 in the second chronological series and these are all 85 x 85, a size not used in either of the first 2 series, and they are listed in the order of the top colour in list being the final glaze colour and the bottom of the list being the first applied. There will be 45 pieces of these – the 53 colours of the first series minus the 8 colours that are in the second series.
pdf exhibition brochure "six women concrete ?", Galerie Renate Bender 2025
pdf exhibition brochure "Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue. A Homage to Barnett Newman“ - 2024
pdf exhibition catalog "Black is Beautiful", 2021
pdf exhibition brochure "Dots and Line to Surface" - 2020
pdf exhibition brochure "wie weiss ist wissen die weisen" - 2019
pdf exhibition brochure "After Image" - 2017
pdf exhibition catalog "Fifty Shades of Red" - 2016
pdf exhibition brochure "Heavy Metal" - 2014
pdf catalog "Landscape Paintings", Gallery Renate Bender 2011
