Untitled 1957

Marcel Barbeau made this untitled work in 1957, wielding what looks like thick black paint, maybe even ink, onto the paper. I can really feel his energy here; the confident, almost abrupt, gestures. It's like he's captured a fleeting thought, a bold statement, in a language only paint can speak. There's a real urgency to the work. I imagine Barbeau, brush loaded, moving quickly, intuitively, across the surface. Look at that upper horizontal sweep of black; you can almost feel his arm moving. It reminds me a bit of Franz Kline, but with a playful twist. These shapes aren’t trying to be anything, they just are. And in that "being," they open up a space for us to project our own meanings, our own feelings. It's amazing how a simple gesture, a splash of color, can spark such a dialogue, not just between the artist and the canvas, but between artists across time.