It is as if Allen has lifted them from the studio floor of Leon Kossoff or Frank Auerbach and stuck them — like wads of tar — onto an abstract painting, whose graphic imagery of
symmetrical patterns evokes the symphonic abstractions of Frantisek Kupka and the Surrealist landscapes of Paul Nash.
These paintings from 1962 and 1963 radiate a
symmetrical serenity in their velvety colors, classical forms that speak to the art of ancient Greece and Egypt, and their interlocking
patterns that
evoke Moorish tile decorations.