Allen Jones – A New Perspective on Floors: Introduction

I first became enthusiastic about Allen Jones’s work when I saw his exhibition at Tooths in the summer of 1967:

I was especially impressed by the extra visual dimension provided by the shelves incorporated into the bottom edge of the canvases; together with the striking imagery and the beautiful hue/tone gradations, this made for a fantastic suite of paintings. Here, below, are two of them:

In parallel with the paintings Editions Alecto published in 1966 a set of 6 lithographs with the title: A New Perspective on Floors. This was an edition of 20, presented in a green box. Although the rapidly burgeoning fine art print scene at this time was largely driven by the widespread adoption of the screenprint medium, Jones has always favoured lithography. Printing on this occasion – as with A Fleet of Buses (also 1966) – was carried out in Los Angeles at Tamarind Workshops.

Here is the poster subsequently commissioned from Kelpra Studio and published in 1967 in an edition 325, of which 20 were signed:

Now, some excellent news for long standing AJ fans like me or anyone who is not yet acquainted with his marvellous body of work: a major exhibition opens next month at the Royal Academy – https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/allen-jones-ra