Untitled 1968

This untitled painting was made by Maurice Esteve, using watercolor to explore how shapes come together. He isn’t trying to trick you into thinking these shapes are ‘real’, but somehow, they still feel like they belong together. Look at how the watercolors pool and bleed, each colour creating a soft edge between shapes. It’s a beautiful mess! You can almost feel him tilting the paper to let the colours run. There’s something playful about how the image is put together, as if he’s playing a game with colour and form. The roundish shapes and straight edges are a bit like magnets, pushing and pulling on each other. To me, the area near the middle, where the pink, yellow and blue rectangles sit, feels particularly playful. It’s as if he’s saying, “Let’s see what happens if I put these colours together.” Esteve reminds me of Paul Klee in the way he lets his intuition guide his work. Ultimately, it's a reminder that art can be about the joy of exploration, rather than trying to make something that looks ‘right.’