National Galleries of Scotland

Ben Nicholson first visited the Greek island of Paros in 1959, and returned several times in the years that followed. The overlapping parts of this relief suggest the effect of dazzling sunlight reflecting off the whitewashed walls of buildings on the Greek island. For the artist, the whiteness and light of Paros reminded him of the early white reliefs he first created just over twenty years earlier. In this work, the colour is not used symbolically, as in Nicholson?s first white reliefs, but instead serves to evoke the essence of a place. The composition is less severe than the strictly horizontal and vertical lines and circles which dominated Nicholson?s early reliefs.