The American painter Michael Venezia developed his aesthetic concept around 1960, when an intensive debate took place on the 'death' of painting and the easel canvas. Venezia, despite the general trend, was one of the few who stood by painting, even though he did not use manual paint application and did not use colour in any compositional sense. Since the beginning of the 1970s, he replaced canvas with wooden slats and since 1986 with untreated wooden blocks, whose front surface he coated in viscous oils or with a spray gun. Often several blocks were arranged, by chance or composition, in rows or layered one on top of the other. The late work, which is reproduced in this publication, foregrounds the problematics of painting. Venezia broadens the tonal spectrum of colour, allows acrylic paints to flow together so that spatial effects come about for the first time. English and German text.
