Untitled 1974

Giorgio Cavallon made this untitled oil painting with soft colours, and simple brush strokes, and it really invites us to think about how a painting comes together. The material quality here is so interesting – see how the white almost feels like a wall, built up with layers. Then these blocks of colour, like earthy browns and yellows, are dropped in, but they don't quite sit right. Take that red line near the bottom left. It is confident, but it seems slightly off or unresolved against the other marks surrounding it. And it makes you wonder what it is doing there. I think Cavallon is in conversation with artists like Agnes Martin here. They both explore what it means to make a painting that is more about feeling and process than about showing us a clear picture. It's like they're both saying, "Hey, let's just see what happens when we put paint on canvas."