Plate I from the portfolio Papiers Traités 1978

Plate I from the portfolio Papiers Traités is a lithograph by the Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky. Alechinsky came of age during the post-World War II period, a time when many artists were grappling with questions of how to represent trauma and the fragmented nature of human experience. Alechinsky's approach here emphasizes spontaneity and the subconscious, reflecting the influence of the CoBrA group, with whom he exhibited. His lines are never quite defined, but always bleed into each other, or are interrupted by a tear in the paper. The yellow and blue inks seem to vibrate, creating a field that engulfs a lithographic order form from the company Rousseau Frères. This form is then overlaid with gestural lines, and figures, that pull back the curtain on the world of work and commerce. This composition suggests a visual metaphor for the tension between the rational and irrational, the planned and the spontaneous. What results is an artwork that refuses to settle, embracing the beauty of uncertainty.