Spiel und Gesetz II 1954

Leo Leuppi made this painting, Spiel und Gesetz II, with a thoughtful, yet playful, approach to line and color. There's a real sense of the hand here. Look at how Leuppi has built up the surface, layering translucent geometric shapes, and then scrawling across it with these funny white curvilinear lines that remind me of some kind of abstract hieroglyph or map. I’m drawn to the way the red and blue shapes peek through the grey, creating this subtle vibration. The texture of the paint suggests it was applied in layers, with each layer influencing the one beneath. It makes me think of Paul Klee’s work, where the process is so visible and the final image is a record of all the steps the artist took. Like Klee, Leuppi seems interested in art as a form which embraces ambiguity and multiple interpretations.