Start Display. Tate Modern. June 2016 – May 2025. Six paintings by Maria Lalic were on exhibition in the Start Display at Tate Modern 2016 - 2025. They are six from a total group of 52 paintings that complete her first series of ‘History Paintings’ - the polychrome series. Writing for the Tate website in February 2016 David Hodge noted, “The titles of all the works in this series share a common structure. Each begins with the term ‘History Painting’, followed by a number referring to the painting’s chronological position in the series, the name of the historical period to which its pigments relate (as derived from the Winsor and Newton chart) and the names of the paints used, listed in the order of their application. The term ‘history painting’ denotes a traditional genre of European painting, which involves the large-scale depiction of narrative scenes, often from religious scripture, mythology or historical record. However, rather than representing history through painting, Lalic’s series comprises a history of painting itself, presented through a chronology of pigments. The artist has stated that while looking at the built-up layers of paint, the viewer witnesses ‘the literal history of the making of that particular painting’ Writing on their first showing in 1995 the art historian Nicholas de Ville has argued that ‘the more minimal the vocabulary an artist chooses ... the more significant becomes the physical stuff of paint’. Consequently de Ville has also stated that although the History Paintings are quite conceptually driven, they are also designed to show that different pigments ‘all have their own nuanced identities’, evidencing an interest in ‘the raw essentials of painting’, which he sees as characteristic of Lalic’s practice (Nicholas de Ville, ‘Maria Lalic: Recent Paintings’, in Todd Gallery 1995, p.9). Discussing her interest in the history of pigments, Lalic has stated: ‘If we look at the colours that were available to someone in the cave era, say ... There are four coloured pigments from that period and they’re so resonant with what that life was situated around – fire and earth, carbon black from fire, and from the earth yellow, red and chalk. It says so much about a particular culture and civilisation ... I think I’m simply excited by recognising a time and place through colour’ (Lalic in Fortnum 2007, p.34). In the current display Lalic’s paintings have been shown alongside Kandinsky, Matisse, Calder, Richter, Kelly, Mukherjee, Klein, Zeid, Riley, W Nicholson.