Untitled 1960

Joan Hernandez Pijuan made this raw, monochrome painting with swift and gestural brushstrokes. I imagine him working on this, layering strokes of blacks and grays in a dance of intuition and control. Look how the paint drips, a surrender to the medium, yet within a carefully constructed composition. There’s a tension here between chaos and order, so typical of abstract expressionism, where the act of painting becomes a stage for internal struggles and resolutions. The heavy, dark lines feel like they’re excavating something from the canvas, revealing a stark, almost architectural structure beneath. It reminds me of the work of other painters like Franz Kline, who similarly used bold strokes to create powerful, abstract forms. It’s like these artists are constantly in conversation, pushing each other to explore the emotional and structural possibilities of paint. And that's what painting is, a back and forth.