Divided # 84, 1999

Maurice Cockrill RA (1936 - 2013)

RA Collection: Art

Maurice Cockrill’s ‘Divided’ series (1999-2000) runs to eighty-four paintings on a variety of scales, making it the most extensive series he has ever made. some of which were shown in 2000 in exhibitions at Galerie Vidal-Saint Phalle, Paris and Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer, Dusseldorf.



Each painting in the series is a two-part composition opposing two linear forms: a straight-edged form extending to the edges of the canvas, and a more organic and self-contained form (these can be interpreted as standing for various oppositions between male and female, geometry and organic form etc).. Precedents for the paintings include Jackson Pollock’s Portrait and a Dream (1953) and Morris Louis’ 'Unfurled paintings'. The interval between the two fields is also significant—the artist thought of them as the equivalent of passages of silence in music, or the gaps between the stanzas of a poem.



After Cockrill’s election as a Member in 1999 the painting was accepted as his Diploma Work in 2000, the same year that the work was shown in the Summer Exhibition.