Painting 1 ’50 belongs to a series of works Milan Mrkusich produced alongside his employment at Brenner Associates, commenced in 1949. Brenner Associates specialised in a form of total design, offering complete architectural services for which Mrkusich undertook a variety of design work. Painting 1 is presented to the market for the first time since its conception and has been in the collection of one of the original founders of the firm since 1950. As noted by Edward Hanfling and Alan Wright in the 2009 monograph on Milan Mrkusich’s work Mrkusich: The Art of Transformation, the influence of Mrkusich’s design work for Brenner Associates is clearly evident in his paintings from the period. Painting 1 ’50 demonstrates a clear investigation into the qualities of line, colour and surface. When paintings and drawings made by Mrkusich in his own time are positioned next to architectural projects from the period including shop window installations or exhibition displays it is interesting to note the crossover between the two lines of work. His handling of three dimensional and two dimensional space signifies an acute awareness of spatial perception, exemplified in Painting 1 ’50. Mrkusich delicately crafts a spatial reality with a vantage of viewpoints in this work. Attention is paid to the specifics of colour and form in this composition, which is finely worked into a combination of oil paint and wax applied to board in transparent layers. Linear formations are delicately scratched in to the surface to form a relief. Colour, alongside line, is a vital entity in Painting 1 ’50. Earthy, rich tones of chocolate browns, blacks and deep blues recede in to the background of the composition forming geometrically angular, planar surface. The light, powdery blues, whites and pinks gently hover in oval and circular formations in the foreground, skimming over and above the finely divided space. Jessica Pearless