To Charlton, being an artist means making paintings as an everyday practice, a relentless work in the studio that needs to be done, with precision and dedication. Charlton is not and does not wish to be an artist in the revolutionary sense. What is revolutionary is the constancy and resolution with which he works. Grey is for the art is the colour of modernity and urbanity; it unites fullness and emptiness; it stands alone for objectivity and functionality on the one hand and emotional extreme on the other: it sets the difference from the choice of the constructivist monochrome seeking for purity as, for Charlton, it is the most useful as well emotional colour there is, being, for example, the colour of melancholy.

Charlton has had solo exhibitions at Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (1976 and 1982); the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld (1992); Museum Moderner Kunst Landkreis Cuxhaven in Otterndorf (1997) and Museum Kurhaus Kleve-Ewald Mataré-Sammlung a Kleve (2002).  Among group exhibitions we can mention Documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982 and, most recently, Temi & Variazioni. Dalla grafia all’azzeramento at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice and Fundamental Painting at the Tate Britain, London (2010), Steven Aalders Alan Charlton Ulrich Erben at Walter Storms Galerie, Monaco (2016), Carlos Cruz-Diez & la Donation Albers-Honegger. Dialogues concrets all’Espace de l’art concret di Mouans Sartoux (2017).

Courtesy of the artist and Alfonso Artiaco, Naples.