Couple of Girls 1967

Manuel Neri made "Couple of Girls" with paint, probably in his studio. It is such a blast of colour that I can almost feel him painting. I can imagine Neri, in his studio, grappling with those reds, blues, and greys, pushing them around the canvas, wiping them away, adding more, until finally, the forms of these girls start to emerge from the ground. It must have been a dance between intention and accident. There is a single vertical stroke of blue that goes over the left figure and the confident, almost aggressive strokes of red and blue suggest an energy, a kind of raw emotionality that I find really compelling. It makes me think of other artists and their mark making, like Joan Mitchell. It’s as though the piece is conversing with other paintings about what it means to be a body, to be seen, and to see. Painting is a form of embodied expression.