Estela Blanca 1950

Gunther Gerzso made this painting, Estela Blanca, with oil on canvas, and you can almost smell the oil paint, can’t you? I see a dark blue world that Gerzso assembled from rectangular shapes, each one a slightly different hue; some are white and look like little windows, others are dark and bottomless. I can just imagine Gerzso playing with these forms, shifting them around, intuitively building up and breaking down his composition. He probably worked on the painting over a period of days, weeks even. I feel like I am standing in front of some ancient ruins, the remnants of civilization viewed in the shadow of night. I think about artists like Hilma af Klint, who used geometric shapes to create other worlds, or Agnes Martin, who found subtle variations within repetition. Artists are always talking to each other, aren’t they? Using the language of painting to express the unexpressable and explore new ways of seeing.