WILLIAM TURNBULL | UNTITLED (1959)

London, Offer Waterman, William Turnbull: New Worlds, Words, Signs, 29th September - 3rd November 2017, cat. no.29, p.101, illustrated p.91.

This calligraphic drawing is part of a group of works discovered only recently at the Artist’s Camden Square home. The circular motif in Untitled (1959) is derived from Turnbull’s earlier paintings and drawings of heads from the mid-1950s, here only part of this motif is showing. We see this notion of a section of a circle developed in Turnbull’s oil paintings from the period, 15-1959 (National Galleries of Scotland). These drawings are highly reminiscent of an ensō (Japanese for ‘circle’), one of the most important symbols in Zen Buddhism.