Provenance: Private Collection, Sydney, NSW

Exhibited: Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland 'Paintings from 1960 - 1966', March, 1966

For six and a half decades, Milan Mrkusich has been at the forefront of modernism in New Zealand. From the outset, he painted abstract pictures, not the landscape subjects that preoccupied his contemporaries. Mrkusich had no interest in representations and symbols of 'New Zealandness', finding inspiration in the innovations of European and American art, and seeking the universal rather than the merely local. This was not an easy path. In the early part of his career, there was virtually no art market in New Zealand, and certainly no market for such radical paintings as Mrkusich's. Painting therefore had to compete for his time with more profitable ventures, such as his work for the pioneering design firm Brenner Associates. But in 1958, when Brenner ceased to be profitable and closed its doors, he had more time to focus on painting. As a result, the following decade saw a series of bold and astonishingly rapid changes to the style and format of his paintings. Centre with Three Elements is an outstanding example from this rich and productive phase of Mrkusich's career.

The Elements series of 1965 was one of the most resolved series of work Mrkusich had produced. The dominant motif, an interlocking circle and square, had been present in the preceding Emblem series, but now it became a more thoroughgoing system. Typically, the system consists of a square support divided into four quadrants, each containing a circular element. Centre with Three Elements, though, is exceptional in its variations on this theme.