Untitled V 1967

Curator: Welcome! Before us is Piero Dorazio’s "Untitled V," an acrylic on canvas piece created in 1967. It exemplifies his signature geometric abstraction. Editor: My immediate reaction is its playfulness. The seemingly random placement of those saturated blocks is visually engaging, a riot of pure pigment. I am interested to understand what processes or labors support this outcome. Curator: Exactly! The composition showcases Dorazio's mastery of color interaction and spatial relationships. Notice how the rectangles and squares, though uniformly shaped, vibrate with optical energy. It is an aesthetic sensation of light playing off each element and activating one another. Editor: Right, and speaking of materials, I am particularly curious about the medium he employs to render those optical effects. Is it true the artist used high-viscosity acrylic medium to achieve these sharp and luminous fields of colour? I am particularly drawn to what seems a coarse granular feel to some surfaces and an interesting interplay with unworked areas in others. It is hard to discern if the support canvas offers any specific characteristic to how the artwork presents to the eye. Curator: You make a crucial observation! The textured planes enhance the chromatic intensity, don’t they? If you think about this, you can see how he subtly defies the conventional notions of perspective and depth using nothing more than his choices and use of the pigments themselves. This painting, at its core, presents a carefully constructed surface appearance designed as pure aesthetic expression. Editor: Thinking in the realm of the aesthetic, what would you say about the wider culture that influenced the use of abstraction in Dorazio's practice? The canvas becomes this site for a discourse between maker, medium and society, yet one which also pushes to exist independent of any traditional representational purpose. Curator: Certainly! Well, through such geometric and chromatic interactions, it offers us an encounter with purely formal and relational art elements, asking the viewer to appreciate color, composition, and texture independently. Editor: Thank you for bringing such acute detail to the artistic strategies involved in this piece. Curator: My pleasure. It’s through observing this arrangement of geometric planes and color as an exercise in perceptual phenomenon and painterly formalism, that we encounter its beauty.