“What exactly is the nature of the space that a painter makes on a canvas? Where is it in relation to the kind of space we understand, that may be looked out on from a high point, or enclosed within four walls? When painters make space, are they increasing, adding to, the amount of space that already exists in the world? Or are they making another space altogether, one that doesn't relate to what is already there? It can't be quite like the space reflected in a mirror, because that is just what it is called, mirror image, an illusion, and doesn't really add anything to the world. And not like the space that Moses made when he parted the waves, because presumably the water just piled up higher on either side, liberating the path between. In many cases the space created by a painter seems strangely infinite, more than when one is gazing at the stars or at the horizon, or at a photograph of the earth taken from the moon. Where is that space and what is it pointing to? Is it pointing as much back to us as outwards? And if it is where is that space?“

Rialto, 1966, is an outstanding early oil by gallery artist Tess Jaray. After graduating from the Slade in 1960, Jaray took a formative trip around Italy, where her first-hand experience of Renaissance architecture in particular had a profound effect on her thinking.

Jaray explains how: “My own uses of formal elements started in 1960, when I first travelled to Italy on a scholarship. I was completely bowled over by the great spaces of the early Renaissance buildings that I saw, the architecture of [Filippo] Brunelleschi in particular. When I returned to England I attempted, if not to replicate this, which of course can’t be done, then at least to find a way of creating pictorial space that in some way evokes comparable, parallel responses, as much as such a thing is possible in painting.”

The large-scale paintings Jaray embarked upon quickly grew into a coherent and highly sophisticated body of work, each painting informed by numerous investigative drawings on paper. Her distinctive images suggested a relationship to Post-Painterly Abstraction, an essentially American movement which had had a considerable influence in Britain. Jaray felt that one painted to explore possibilities, rather than to express oneself. Here in Rialto she plays with geometry, pattern, colour and perspective, intentionally disorientating the viewer in relation to the forms in front of them.

The titles of Jaray’s early paintings suggest the Italian churches she had visited: Cupola Blue (1963), Sanctuary (1964); reference specific places: St Stephen’s Green (1964), Versailles (1966); while others, like Minuet (1967), allude to music. While many of her contemporaries coming out of the R.C.A. were painting in punchy, primary colours and at a time when Bridget Riley was working exclusively in black and white, Jaray’ paintings were made in a nuanced palette of secondary and tertiary colours. She chose murky emerald greens, deep purples and midnight blues for some pictures, at other times she chose paler, dirty pastels like the mocha brown, coral and blue-grey we find here. While Jaray’s drawings are evidence of a meticulous and sequential approach to composition, her choice of colour has always been, by contrast, more instinctive and emotionally charged, her colour groupings chosen for their poetic force.

Natalie Rudd notes how ‘A new landscape orientation in Jaray’s work was introduced with Garden of Anna, 1966 [coll. Tate, London], and this wider perspective was adopted and extended in Rialto, 1966. The sheer breadth of this canvas brings to mind the majestic span of Venice's iconic bridge. The wide composition emerged through preparatory drawings, with points of geometry determining the ultimate format of the work. Rialto shares compositional similarities with the mural that Jaray was commissioned to produce for the British Pavilion at Montreal’s Exposition 67. Measuring 10 by 40 feet, this epic work complemented the long and narrow layout of the space. As Jaray explained: ‘The final design, changes as one walks along it. From the side the directions clarify — like the skull in Holbein’s Ambassadors — and each area moves and changes and in turn becomes part of the next.’ The Montreal mural was a mature, confident and ambitious painting, embracing site and context and anticipating the large-scale public commissions that Jaray would undertake in the 1980s and 1990s’.