Nicola L. @ Alison Jacques Gallery

This exhibition spans 50 years of work by Nicola L. (1932 – 2018).  Her work started with abstraction then she succumbed to figuration, followed by Pop Art along with its European counterpart, Nouveau Réalisme, and art felt collaborative.

Later she incorporated the body into her work. It was not until 1964, however, that the full potential of this metaphor made itself apparent. Following a meeting with her mentor, the Argentinian artist Alberto Greco, in Ibiza.  Nicola L. lay on a beach and dreamt of a single unifying skin: a literal and metaphorical site within which the individual could become the collective. Greco took his life the following year. Nicola ‘burned all of her abstract paintings’ and produced the first in her series of Pénétrables: wearable fabrics that connected those within, transforming a group of individuals into a singular, functioning organism.