Tropical Tan, 1967, Wrinkle finish paint on black steel, 243.8 x 365.76 cm, 96 x 144 in.
In 1950, Dorothea Rockburne moved from her native Canada to North Carolina, where she entered Black Mountain College to study under the mathematician Max Dehn. While she was there she met fellow students Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Guston, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage—a heady group of daring young artists. Rockburne pivoted to painting. “I wanted very much to see the equations I was studying, so I started making them in my studio,” she has said. “I was visually solving equations.” Rockburne is now 90, and this show in London is her first European survey. There are two dozen works on view, dating from 1967 to 2013.
—Elena Clavarino