Untitled 1950

Alexandre Istrati made this untitled painting with oil paint. It's all rectangles and squares in ochre and red, so you can imagine how it came into being, shifting through trial and error. I sympathize with the artist because I know what it's like! What was he thinking when he made it? I picture Istrati layering thin washes of pigment onto the canvas, how the ochre glows beneath the red. The paint isn’t too thick, but you can see the texture. One particular gesture, the rounding of the top left corner of the central red shape, is how the artist created tension. Istrati was part of a community, constantly in conversation with other painters. Artists are in an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations over fixed meanings.