Acquired from the AGO, "Alliance" is a fine example of Canadian Artist Charles Robb's colour field oeuvre.

Son of internationally renowned colour field painter Jack Bush, Robb began painting as a teenager. In 1963, at the age of 25, he was already considered good enough by art historian & critic Clement Greenberg to have a one-person exhibition at the prestigious Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York. At this time he was drawn to landscape painting which, during his years at OCA, became a devotion to abstract expressionism. Over the years this devotion evolved through various modes, experimenting with colour field painting but with more a lyrical bent.

Robb, like the elder Bush, is a colourist. He worked in large scale, meticulously preparing a complex, multi-layered background and then super-imposing a number of simple abstract shapes that serve as containers for fascinating colour choices in unusual combinations. One of his trademark devices is a gestural flick that looks like a quotation or ink mark. Swarms stream across his canvases and in some pieces they resemble the dance of brightly coloured petals blowing in the wind, while in others they remind one of converging schools of tropical fish, sunlit ripples on a clear pond, a golden wheat field tossing in the breeze or sky rockets exploding in the night sky. The effect is soft, lyrical, and romantic.

Charles Robb (1938-2023)