'Peter Joseph: The Early Works' at Lisson Gallery London

On view through 15 March, Peter Joseph’s 17th solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery presents a selection of early and rare works from the 1960s and ‘70s that track Joseph’s development from vividly coloured, geometric compositions and shaped canvases through to the muted rectangular and square paintings that would define the following decades of his career. Spanning the years from 1964 to 1978, 'Peter Joseph: The Early Works' features 12 paintings, as well as previously unseen sketchbooks, which chart Joseph’s experiments with colour and form. The presentation journeys from earlier paintings that focus on vibrant primary colour and performativity – for which he received wide critical and institutional acclaim, including exhibitions at Camden Arts Centre and Kenwood House in 1966 – to his Cinema Paintings which pre-figure Joseph's signature Border paintings of the 1980s and 90s.

From his transition to painting full-time in the early 1960s after a career in graphic design, Joseph emerged as a key figure in contemporary art, seeking to challenge the boundaries of abstraction, drawing influence from the Italian Renaissance through to modernist movements. Influenced initially by the approach to large-scale he observed in the work of the American abstract expressionists, and then in artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Kenneth Noland, he subsequently rejected the ‘public scene’ of contemporary art for a renewed focus on older painting, eventually leaving London for Gloucestershire in the early 1980s.

Film by Laura Bushell.