Leon Morrocco: Apres-midi

By Susan Mansfield, 13.08.2021

Leon Morrocco, A Village and Hillside, Alpes Maritime, 2020. Courtesy the artist and the Open Eye Gallery.

Much of Leon Morrocco’s work is inspired by travel: sun-soaked landscapes in France or Spain, or Australia, where he lived for some years. In 2020, a year when all travel was dramatically limited, Morrocco managed a summer stay in the Alpes-Maritimes which seems to have fuelled an entire body of work back in his studio in locked-down London.

Walking into the Open Eye Gallery is like stepping into a house in Roquefort-Les-Pins: many of the paintings capture views from windows and so, in turn, become windows themselves into a place of azure skies, lush trees and rocky outcrops. There is a swimming pool, too, just below the window, still, turquoise and Hockney-esque, on which holiday-makers float on colourful li-los.

While it does make one long for a holiday somewhere sunny with mountain villages and swimming pools, the sheer quantity and energy of the work is an indication of the vitality in Morrocco’s studio, even as the artist approaches the age of 80. Morrocco works in oils to significant scale, and in pastel, gouache and charcoal, approaching his subjects with a seemingly tireless fascination.

The landscape is a challenge for a painter, a place of colours and contrasts. Shapes of trees and buildings are kept simple and sculptural while he gets to work on the colours and textures: rich green foliage and orange earth in the middle distance, pastel shades on the rocky escarpments beyond. A trio of Scottish works show him applying similar techniques to Johnshaven and Arbroath, homing in on the patches of bright colour in a more muted locale.

Many of his ‘window’ views include still life objects in the foreground: green artichokes in a clay bowl, a coloured jug, a gleaming aubergine. And there are figures, too, at a distance: the swimmers in the pool, a passer-by walking her dog. In a handful of works, he leaves the landscape behind for the starker surroundings of the town of Grasse: weathered orange walls, ornate doors and graffiti.

For those who love Morrocco’s work, none of this is a surprise. What might be more revelatory are the drawings, the finely wrought studies of twisted olives trees to which he returns again and again. In this long, slow, dreamy painted afternoon, they are reminders of the consummate skills at work in creating it.

'Leon Morrocco RSA RGI: Après-midi' is on at Open Eye Gallery, until 28th August, part of Edinburgh Art Festival