Composition #49 1961

Yuri Zlotnikov made this untitled painting with big sweeping gestures of blue, green, and these pops of red and yellow, like a dance across the canvas. I can imagine him standing in front of it, brush loaded, thinking about how the colors crash into each other. It's like he's chasing something – not a perfect image, but maybe the feeling of being in a crowd or a forest, the way colors shift and blur when you’re moving. Look at how the blue drips down, thick in some places, almost watery in others. That’s the good stuff! The materiality of paint doing its thing. Zlotnikov’s part of this long conversation painters have been having for centuries. Each one picks up the brush and adds their own little bit of chaos, their own way of seeing. This piece feels like a question, not an answer. It leaves so much open, so much room for us to wander around in it and that's what makes it interesting.