Untitled 1953

Manoucher Yektai made this untitled painting with oil paint, probably in his studio, you can see the painting is signed '53. It feels like the painting came into being through trial, error, and intuition, with dominant gestural marks and a warm color palette of yellows, reds, and browns that are punctuated with blues, greens, and grays. I sympathize with Yektai, imagining what it might have been like to create such a dense, tactile surface. What was he thinking when he laid down each stroke, building up the painting's thick impasto? The physicality of the paint is so important here—each dab and stroke seems to communicate a feeling, an intention, a moment of decision-making. The way Yektai layers the paint, creating texture and depth, really shapes our experience of the painting. You can almost feel the weight and the movement of his hand as he worked. Yektai’s work is part of an ongoing conversation among painters across time, each inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting, for Yektai, is a form of embodied expression, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations, and creating a site of inquiry for both the artist and the viewer.