John Mitchell 'Palladium 2011 black/red' Ink on Aluminium

John Mitchell (1943-2014)

Palladium 2011, Black/Red

Ink on aluminium, 2011

An original work by British abstract artist John Mitchell, whose career spanned more than five decades and explored the relationship between mathematics, colour, painting and sculpture.

Born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, Mitchell studied at Kingston College of Art before establishing himself as an artist and influential teacher. His first solo exhibition was held at Camden Arts Centre in 1972, followed by exhibitions at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Galerie Swart in Amsterdam.

In 1978, he was awarded the prestigious Gregory Fellowship in Painting at the University of Leeds, previously held by Terry Frost. The fellowship gave Mitchell two years to concentrate on his own work and culminated in a major exhibition at Leeds University Galleries.

Throughout his career, Mitchell was particularly interested in the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical progression in which each number is the sum of the preceding two. He used these proportional relationships to explore geometry, repetition and the sometimes surprising ways in which apparently identical forms can be perceived differently.

Palladium 2011, Black/Red belongs to Mitchell’s later period, when his longstanding investigation of geometric abstraction increasingly crossed the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

The work is created in black and red ink on aluminium, with a series of precisely arranged geometric projections forming an almost circular composition. The red appears intermittently behind the black, creating a subtle relationship between the two colours and suggesting another layer beneath the surface.

This relationship between what is visible and what is concealed was central to Mitchell’s work. He was fascinated by how small changes in proportion, orientation or colour could fundamentally alter our understanding of a form.

In 2011, Mitchell’s work was the subject of an exhibition titled Incised and Cut Tondos at Lemon Street Gallery in Truro, reflecting his continuing interest in circular compositions and the relationship between two-dimensional images and three-dimensional objects.

Mitchell spent his later years working from his studio overlooking Newlyn Harbour in Cornwall, continuing to develop his ideas through painting, drawing and sculpture.

In an appreciation of his work written in 2011, fellow artist David Ross described Mitchell’s achievement as a willingness to explore rather than explain, allowing highly ordered systems and intuition to coexist.

An interesting example of Mitchell’s later work, made just three years before his death.

Artist: John Mitchell (1943-2014)
Title: Palladium 2011, Black/Red
Date: 2011
Medium: Ink on aluminium
Origin: United Kingdom
Provenance: John Mitchell’s Personal Collection & Studio Sale, Lay’s Auctioneers, Cornwall, August 2026
Presentation: Framed