Composition Schwendi 1961

Samuel Buri made "Composition Schwendi" with what looks like oil on canvas, though I can't be certain. The whole painting feels like a delicious kind of 'almost', you know? The colors! That juicy orange, fighting with a cool blue and a kind of lavender-gray, it's like a dance, where no one wants to lead. I love how the paint is both thick and thin, transparent in some places, and really built up in others. There's this area on the left, where those drippy lines come down. They're like tears, or maybe rain, but they're also just... there, a physical fact of the paint and the canvas. Buri reminds me of Joan Mitchell, in the sense of both of them grappling with similar issues in painting, where the whole is only greater than the sum of its parts. It's about feeling your way through the mess, and finding something beautiful in the process.