I visited the Venice bi-annual twice before only to be disappointed by the little amount of good painting to feed my eyes and soul. This year I went because I heard about the PG exhibition.
I was not disappointed.
I spent the entire day at the ‘Accademia’, leaving and returning, three times, till the gallery was closed. its a rare event for me, since I never saw a full retrospective of his work before. even in the last round, it all looked new to me, and I hadn't stopped discovering new details.
I am posting first his details separately since I think the quality of the details asks for it, the line/surfaces, the dry/wet strokes, the thin/thick layers, the colors, the scale variation, the up/down/left/right games in his crystal clear compositions. i wasn’t familiar with his red/light blue duotone, and since i use it often, i was excited to find it there.
Every question I ever asked my self as a painter he has answered in those details.
The second part here is about his wife. i loved the work called 'night' with their two heads floating in the big black sea. its roughly 400x300m, so mostly waves and b&w. it resembles another composition in the room, same size but with a sun up on the left above were their heads are. He also illustrated some of her poems. A beautiful series of Four squares around 60x60 panels of a hand nudging a book or a pink clock. one item at the time, not big stagings like the big works, but so clear, its shocking.
The third part is about the case of his vocabulary evolution, the change of style, in which he answers to simply, it is beyond the point, my only concern is to stay alive, in a state of painting, the rest is not my concern.
De Kooning joined in and said, this is not about politics or anything like it, its simply about freedom.
the second video explains just that, what is that freedom and how to go there. first when you enter the studio everyone is there with you, critics, dealers, other artists etc, than they leave one by one, than you leave. thats were painting happen.
