Building With Small Black Silence 1961

Mikuláš Medek built this painting with thick layers of red and black. I imagine him, pushing the paint around the canvas, carving out the circular form at the center. What was he thinking, alone in his studio wrestling with this image? The surface is built up with small marks that create a heavy texture. That strong black mark at the top, dividing the composition into sections. I wonder if Medek thought of it as a window or a door or maybe a shadow. It’s interesting how the shapes and forms seem to emerge from the darkness, as though Medek was revealing them bit by bit. The small blue dots add little points of light, breaking up the intensity of the red. I see echoes of other painters in this work, like Rothko’s use of color or maybe the surrealism of someone like Yves Tanguy. Artists are always borrowing, stealing, and transforming each other’s ideas, remixing the past into something new. Painting is such an embodied form of expression, a process that embraces ambiguity and allows for endless interpretation.