Marcel's Salvation 1988

Jörg Immendorff made “Marcel’s Salvation” in 1988, and it’s this feverish dreamscape of reds and blues, all glowing with neon energy. You can almost feel the artist wrestling with the paint, trying to pin down something elusive, something just out of reach. I imagine Immendorff, in his studio, cigarette smoke swirling, surrounded by half-finished canvases. He's layering these images, figures, chess boards, and paintings within paintings, right? There's the electric buzz of the lines looping around. Like he's trying to lasso some kind of chaotic energy, or maybe he's mapping out the connections between all these disparate elements. The guy was part of a generation grappling with history, with politics. You can see it in the intensity of the brushstrokes, in the way the colors clash and vibrate against each other. It makes me think about other German painters like Baselitz, who were also pushing painting to its limits. They were all in conversation, challenging each other, trying to make sense of a world that often felt senseless. Painting, for them, was like thinking in public—messy, uncertain, but totally alive.