“Colour as a specific substance, as material fact and as paint, is the theme of Maria Lalić’s work, which she has been systematically unfold ing in various large-scale series for more than twenty years……For her paintings bring into play the colours of reality as specific material facts and as paint, thus enabling one to experience the links and interactions of the factual and actual forms of appearance of colours on the basis and as modulations of their respective, concrete, material features” Michael Fehr catalogue essay pp 12 ‘Landscape Paintings’ 2011
Maria Lalić is a painter whose practice makes reference to the material and historical bases of painting as the underpinning structure for each of three extensive series of work.
In the first group – ‘Colour and Metal’ – panels of metal are juxtaposed with monochrome panels painted with named artists oil colours derived from the adjacent metal, for example Cremnitz White with lead, Sap Green with copper, Mars Yellow with iron. The facture of these paintings makes specific reference to ‘objectness’ through a relationship with extant work known as ‘Minimalism’ in the UK and US and ‘Konkret Art’ in Europe. The second group – the ‘History Paintings’ – explores the ‘inventions’ of artists pigment using a readymade structure: a Winsor and Newton colour chart that categorised colour into six eras from Cave, through Egyptian, Greek, Italian C18th/19th and C20th. These apparently monochrome paintings are in fact
polychrome and consist of many layered glazes, era by era. The pigments are heavy with associations of their time of discovery, for example the four colours listed under ‘Cave’ speak of their time - deriving from fire and earth. Her notion of ‘History’ in relation to time is threefold – the readymade structure through the Winsor and Newton chart, the desire for pure abstraction of sensation through colour and the ‘Monochrome’ in C20th painting and the concrete, physical process of the making of each painting, evident on the edges of the canvas.
In the third series – ‘Landscape Paintings’ – Lalić explores the possibilities of contemporary landscape in these two panel paintings. In each painting one panel is painted in oil paint made from earth she has collected in specific locations and the other in an eponymously named artists’ oil colour. Together they pay homage to a familiar, extant landscape painting, for example oil paint made from earth collected in Argenteuil, France, is painted on the lower panel whilst the upper panel is painted with commercially manufactured artists oil colour ‘French Ochre’. The size of the painting derives from Monet’s painting ‘The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil’ 1872 in the collection of the National Gallery, London. Additionally Maria Lalić continues to work on an extensive group of drawings which explore the full range of 19 grades of graphite pencil, combining all grades from 10H - 8B.
Lalic's work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in public and private museums and galleries throughout the UK and Europe and in the US and New Zealand and her work is represented in numerous public and private collections. Examples include 'Compendium Drawing' in the V&A collection; Colour and Metal works in the Arts Council collection and Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery, Exeter (a 3 part commission); and six History Paintings, part of the Tate Collection, and currently exhibited in the Start Display, Tate Modern. Other public collections include those of the Department of Trade and Industry; Deutsche Bank; Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum,Hagen; and the Museum fur Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt. She was shortlisted for the Jerwood Painting Prize 1997.
Maria Lalić studied Painting at Central School of Art and Design (BA Hons), Chelsea School of Art (MA) and was Fellow in Painting at Bath Academy of Art 1977-8. She taught at Bath Spa University from 1978 - 2018 and was Professor in Painting from 1998.