Perspective au cercle rouge 1976

This is "Perspective au cercle rouge" by Martha Boto. She painted this using, what looks like, fairly flat areas of colour to create a real illusion of depth. What gets me about this piece is the surface. It is not trying to trick you into thinking it is anything other than a painted surface. The paint isn’t thick or luscious, but it is very present. In the edges of the square you can see the faint brushstrokes like a ghostly trace of Boto’s hand. They remind you of the choices she made, a record of her thinking and feeling. Look how the circle in the middle doesn't *quite* line up with the edges of the squares. It is this tension between the hard edged geometry and the soft touch of the hand that really makes this painting sing. Like Josef Albers and those colour squares he was always painting, Boto seems to be asking us how we can think differently through colour.