VOLCANO, 1972
Oil on paper. 27 x 39¾in. (69 x 102cm.)
Inscribed ‘Mt Etna Eruption, 1971’ on the reverse.
Signed with the monogram and dated lower left.
Provenance
David Lay, Penzance, 14th October 2003.
David Lay, Penzance, 10th February 2004, lot 22.
Private collection.
Exhibited
Exeter, City of Exeter Art Gallery, 1972, No. 37.
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 86.
Described in the Newlyn catalogue as ‘convulsive landscape’. A volcanic eruption is a landscape convulsing in its most literal sense.
After nearly twenty years without any major eruptions, a series of eruptions started at Etna in April 1971 and continued intermittently for the next twenty-two years. Mt Etna was the volcano into which Empedocles jumped. Further references to Empedocles and Mt Etna are made in Empedocles (1943); It is called the Bed of Empedocles (1955) and Memories of Mount Etna II (1979).
At first sight, this is a straightforward, almost schematic, portrayal of volcanic eruption. The pyramidal form of the volcano in the foreground contains brightly coloured flames of red, yellow and orange. In the sky above, the expelled material rises in an inverted pyramid containing clouds of steam and water vapour. The atmosphere is darkened by a dust haze.
As is often the case with Colquhoun, hermetic symbolism is built into the forms of this work. A triangle with point uppermost is the alchemical symbol for the element of fire, and a triangle with the point downwards symbolises water. The partial superimposition of the triangles suggests an incomplete Seal of Solomon. This reading is reinforced by the presence of a horizontal marker that crosses the painting at the place where the triangles intersect and which divide it into two roughly mirroring halves, so yielding the idea of ‘as above, so below’.
In ‘Fire and the Pyramid of Flame’ (Nichols 2007 pp. 93-94) Colquhoun refers to the separate hermetic meanings given to the three angles which make up the triangle of fire. The left basal angle is attributed to the Volcanic fire which flashes through the abysses of Earth. It is surely significant, therefore, that she has chosen to demarcate this corner of the triangle by overpainting it in a flat colour.
The painting, despite its superficial simplicity, is an image of alchemical work in progress; of change, instability, metamorphosis and transition
Reference
Nichols, S.(ed) The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun. 2007. lulu.com/multisell
