Grata nera fondo multicolore (Origine) 1950

This is Mario Ballocco’s "Grata nera fondo multicolore," or "Black Grate on Multicolored Background." I want to imagine Ballocco in the studio, maybe a little impatient, putting down that black grid and then punching those colors through. Red, yellow, green, blue... It's a party trying to happen behind bars. There's something so determined about the way the colors don't quite fit the architecture of the black lines; like they’re squirming to get out. Like some kind of pixelated stained glass. I get the sense he’s riffing on a theme, going back and forth, thinking about Albers, maybe Mondrian. He's got his own take on all those grids, and the whole history of geometric abstraction. It's like he's saying, "Yeah, I see you, but let's try this." Artists are always having this big conversation across time, where one person does something, and then someone else sees it and runs with it. So much of painting is about that back and forth.