The current exhibition of Graham Nickson at Knoedler & Company brings together three bodies of the artist’s work, according to the gallery. “The first, a group of early oils composed with frames hand-painted by the artist, most created in the environs of Rome, was begun shortly after Nickson’s arrival there as a recipient of the 1972 Rome Prize. It was in Italy that sunrises and sunsets first became major themes in his work, and the small format landscapes he painted, some of which are grouped as diptychs and triptychs, were the basis of the predella paintings that are components of several of the artist’s monumental canvases of the period.”

In the catalog, Nickson told noted critic Lilly Wei, “I’m aware of the nature of painting in our time, then and now, and in the 1970s, no one painted sunsets—or sunrises. Avant-garde art was conceptual, minimalist, multimedia. I wanted to paint— already suspect—and I wanted to tackle a dangerous subject, something risky that would shock my contemporaries. What could be more radical than the sun? I wanted to pry it out of cliché, to be seen as it is.”

“Graham Nickson: Paintings 1972-2011 – Paths of the Sun” runs through October 29 at Knoedler & Company, 19 East 70th Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues, 212-794-0550, knoedlergallery.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.