Marne 1957

Modest Cuixart has made Marne, with expressive marks and a warm color palette, like a memory glowing from within. It feels like he started with an orange wash, maybe thinned with turpentine, letting it stain the canvas. Then, into that warmth, he's scratched and drawn with charcoal, making these loopy, cage-like forms. There’s a struggle there; I feel it in my own arm. I wonder if he was trying to capture something fleeting, like a feeling that’s hard to pin down. Cuixart's work is often about transformation, and I see that here too. This image exists somewhere between landscape and abstraction, and that is such an interesting place to be. It is a conversation with artists like Antoni Tàpies who explored similar territories of material and mark-making. It is like they are bouncing ideas off each other. It's like they are saying “Hey, I see what you did there, and I am going to try something like that but different.”