In ‘Woman Watching a Murder’ Kiff completely reimagines Bellini’s The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr. The shadowy figures are a small element influenced by the Bellini painting and Kiff adds colour, vibrancy and a looming woman. The painting was made years after his time as Associate Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London, between 1991-1993, which is testament to the imagery remaining in Kiff’s mind. Looking to these historic works, which for Kiff focused on subject matter, strengthened the artist’s modernist and formal ideals which go beyond story telling. He wanted to find a balance and a wholeness in his works and was ‘burning to get the colour moving.’ Kiff’s works remain fresh with an immediacy, deriving from his use of the sensuous properties of materials and colour.

The work was featured by Skye Sherwin in a Guardian article, writing ‘…with Woman Watching a Murder, inspired by Bellini’s brutal all-male scene The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr. Kiff takes the blue from a scrap of sky in Bellini’s otherwise washed-out woodland setting to create an azure vision, where a tiny tussling couple are watched by a giant woman, sad and resigned.’ (2025)