Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Counterpoint Vase in Twelve Tones is an important early example of the musical inspiration that made Fritsch’s work in the early 1970s so distinctive and influential. Music, a passion nurtured at an early age and developed through advanced study of the piano and harp, has been Fritsch’s most important and abiding influence. A precise vocabulary of metaphors derived from musical theory underpins her work. In her own words, ‘the form of a piece is the equivalent of a melody or theme; the rhythm figures in the painting correspond to tempo and rhythm in music; and colour correlates with harmony and modulation.’ Curving grids follow the form of the vessel with mathematical precision and act ‘as the equivalent of a time signature in music.’ The rhythm figures based on these grids are modified by the vessel’s curvature, emphasising its dynamic structure.

Vase, stoneware painted with white and coloured slips, ovoid with flat base, the sides rising to a box-like rim section turned out flat at the top; the interior overlaid with a speckled white slip, the whole of the exterior except the base overlaid with coloured slips in two series of opposed spiral bands rising from the base to the rim clockwise and anti-clockwise, these subdivided into segements of various dimensions painted in various coloured slips (dark and pale green, pale greeny-blue, lilac, white, yellow ochre, rusty brown breaking to yellow ochre, pale pink, buff).