Dusk, Calm, Signals 1966

Dusk, Calm, Signals is from a group of paintings referred to as the Signals/Silences series, which invariably include one or both terms, denoting either high colour contrasts and emphatic rhythms or more subdued, contemplative colours. In 1966 Gaucher abandoned the diamond shape of the Square Dances series for the rectangle: the paintings in this group are entirely horizontal in orientation.

Gaucher’s explicit use of the diagonal would go underground for the next decade, though implicit oblique vectors crossed and recrossed the paintings executed in between. As in the Square Dances series, the colour fields are framed along either or both of their horizontal and vertical edges, and the “signals” are stacked in precisely calculated intervals of different rhythmic dispositions and arranged symmetrically across both axes.