Jack Bush is a central figure in Canadian and international post-war abstraction. A founding member of Painters Eleven, Bush helped introduce and legitimize abstract art in Canada, aligning his practice with major modernist movements such as Colour Field painting and post-painterly abstraction. Influenced and championed by prominent critic Clement Greenberg, who described him as a “supreme colorist,” Bush developed a distinctive visual language defined by radiant colours, lyrical forms and rhythmic compositions.

This vibrant 1975 painting exemplifies Bush’s late-career command of colour, rhythm and lyrical abstraction. It also reflects the artist’s deep engagement with musical structure. Bush often spoke about the abstract figures in his paintings as colour “notes,” and in this painting, they connect and dance across the composition. The title, too, suggests a musical subject. Attacca (also spelled attaca) is an Italian musical instruction directing performers to proceed to the next movement or section immediately, without any pause. Used frequently in classical repertoire and occasionally in contemporary works, the term ensures an uninterrupted flow between musical parts. By eliminating breaks, attacca heightens momentum, preserves dramatic continuity, and reinforces the structural cohesion of a composition.

Bush was known to be a fan of jazz music, often playing it in his studio. In about 1974, Terry Bush, son of the artist and a musician, gave his father a glossary of musical terms, which served to inspire the titles of his father’s later paintings. Most of these paintings convey a sense of movement and tempo; this painting, with its bright colour palette, exudes a sense of joy.

Set against a softly textured, warm ground, a constellation of boldly coloured, free-floating brush-strokes arcs across the surface in energetic sweeps. The gestures—rendered in saturated tones of bright pink, cyan, emerald green, yellow, orange, red and olive—appear as independent colour bands, each defined by clean edges yet softened by the tactile handling of the paint. The arrangement creates a dynamic sense of lift and musicality, characteristic of Bush’s mature vocabulary, in which colour behaves almost like sound: distinct, resonant, and interacting through rhythm rather than representation. The lightly worked background provides a gentle counterpoint to the vivid strokes, enhancing their luminosity and making the composition feel spontaneous yet carefully balanced.

As in music, achieving harmony and equilibrium in visual art is a challenging feat. Bush accomplishes this with remarkable finesse in Attacca. Even at this scale, the composition feels inviting, intimate and finely balanced, uniting delicacy and exuberance in a way that defines his unmistakable artistic voice.

The catalogue raisonné states: “Another title PAGODA is inscribed by the artist on the verso but crossed out and replaced with a full inscription bearing its current title, Attaca. The sweeping strokes of colour indeed resemble the general shape of a pagoda, which is a building type found in parts of Asia. This multistory structure is characterized by eaves sweeping outward upon each level.”