Law started the Black Paintings in 1960 and continued to repeat and refine these up until his death in 2004. This obsession with creating an intensely pigmented and heavily layered work on canvas was summarised in his own words: “I thought of the black paintings as having no beginning and no end; they are the complete object”.

The series was the subject of a 1974 exhibition at MoMA, Oxford, 10 Black Paintings, curated by Sir Nicholas Serota. The Guggenheim Collection have the largest holding of these paintings, acquired as part of the great Panza Collection in 1991 and 1992, but unfortunately these works are rarely, if ever, exhibited.

"They’re black, or blackish, because that’s the pigment which works. It makes a big pool, it sucks the light in, rather than out, and you can’t quite focus on the pigmentation because the eye is trying to find the right wavelength, the pupil oscillates in its attempt to get the right colour vibration. It can’t quite make it, and so you get this hovering hole.”
Bob Law, in conversation with Richard Cork (1974)