Greaves has always been 'of the Left': as a young man in Sheffield he attended political meetings and sold the Daily Worker in Fitzallen Square. As an activist, he was an early supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, going on 'Ban the Bomb' marches and attending a vigil outside Downing Street in 1959. Even in the 1960s, when still-life provided his focus, he incorporated elements which thrust this most conventional of subjects into a more political arena. In Flower and Collage (1968-9) (Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield), harmony is disrupted through the inclusion of a torn fragment of newspaper that bares the headline 'Americans bomb in error another friendly village'. In a related painting, The Ultimate Absurdity (c.1968), Vietnam is alluded to with the inclusion of a knife penetrating a rose that bleeds. In 1969, Greaves even exhibited a 13ft (4m) painting at the I.C.A., as a commentary on the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and designed a poster in protest, too. More recently, the war in Iraq has led to one of his major works of recent years, a massive dark triptych, War (2003-06).
Literature
James Hyman, Derrick Greaves: From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La, Lund Humphries, London 2007, illustrated p. 88.