Max Gimblett

Max Gimblett

Featured in Minimal Opulence: The Gary Langsford and Vicki Vuleta Collection

Max Gimblett is one of the country’s most celebrated contemporary painters. Active since the 1960s, he has created an extensive body of paintings, prints, drawings and objects. Gimblett is well-known for his distinctive works, and particularly for the quatrefoil motif that appears throughout his practice.

While painting is the source of much of his renown, Gimblett has consistently produced editions of prints throughout his career. Rather than always producing numbered editions of identical prints, the artist has instead favoured creating works that share common elements in unique configurations. His screen-prints have been presented on aluminium and on paper, often in his signature quatrefoil shape. Combining gestural sweeps of ink and employing various screen-printing techniques to create dynamic backgrounds, these striking works capture the essence of his practice.

Gimblett has lived in New York since 1972, though makes regular visits back to New Zealand, his home country that he greatly adores. His works are infused with the vibrancy and immediacy of life in New York, coupled with an innate ease from his Kiwi roots. He has long studied and engaged with Zen Buddhist philosophies, and this has had great influence on his practice. His connection to Zen is represented physically through the gesture and movement in his work, though also in their meditative quality.

With decades of studio practice and philosophical engagement behind them, these prints distil and capture the essence of his artmaking. Gimblett has forged a reputation as one of New Zealand’s great abstract artists. He continues to produce and exhibit artwork in Aotearoa and abroad to this day.

Through extensive periods of study and travel, Max Gimblett has developed a rich understanding of human psychology and art that transcends borders. Jungian psychology and Asian philosophies and art-making practices are central influences in his work. His study of these fields of knowledge began in the 1960s and has remained constant throughout his career. He has referred to an awakening of Western culture towards Asia, Asian art and the ideas synonymous with its culture and history as an important thread in his artistic practice.

It is through the practice of Zen calligraphy that Gimblett conceives his spontaneous, all mind/no mind gestures. He responds instinctively to the canvas, creating gestural brush strokes that blend vigorous expression with a sense of harmony. His engagement with Zen philosophy gives such mark making techniques a paradoxical reading: they become both a unique impression left by the artist, and egoless. This methodology of
all mind/no mind is central to Gimblett’s artistic practice. Wystan Curnow writes, “... [Max Gimblett] does not in the usual sense watch what he is doing – there’s no time... The eye acts much as the arm does and aims to interact with it.”1 Gesture precedes thought in a burst of pigment on canvas. His paintings have the assured confidence that arises from a sustained, meditative practice.

Alongside his Eastern influences, Gimblett is acutely aware of the Western traditions that inform his work. He acknowledges that his practice aligns with other practices in the trajectory of American art history, most notably the work of painters Jackson Pollock and William de Kooning. The ideas and methods of these artists are part of the backdrop of influences that his work connects with and responds to.

Gimblett is one of few New Zealanders to have exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City. This is one of many highlights in his extraordinary, decades long pursuit of a unique artistic practice.

Curnow, Wystan and Yau, John. Max Gimblett. Craig Potton Publishing in association with Gow Langsford Gallery, 2002.