Aylesbury Estate

Coventry's Estate paintings and prints, examples of which are owned by many major museums including the Tate Modern, look like homages to Kasimir Malevich's suprematist masterpieces, however the simple, geometric shapes are in fact exact,scaled replicas of the maps showing the layout of buildings found outside British public housing estates.

Coventry famously said: 'I look at the history of art, and I look at a social issue and I combine them.' He later said: 'the social issue re-empowers modernism. If you attach it to a piece of art history, it becomes alive again.' This trademark interest in the overlap between art, social issue and art history can be traced through this series above all others - Estate Paintings - which combines realist cartography of the specific social housing site in question - with contemporary abstraction/representation, and paying homage to older artists who have paved the way - Malevich - to find a meeting ground between these three primary concerns.

Screenprint in colours, 2014, signed, edition of 50, 54 x 42 cm. (21¼ x 16½ in.)