Summer in Venice I 1966

Adja Yunkers made this print, Summer in Venice I, and it feels like the ghost of a memory. The colours are pure and bold: yellow, brown, blue. You can almost see him layering each colour, building up the image, shifting this way and that, deciding what stays and what goes. I imagine Yunkers thinking about the light in Venice and the shadows of the buildings as he created this. The dark, brooding forms feel like they’ve emerged from somewhere deep, maybe even a dream. The blue feels like water and sky, an airy, open space for the darker shapes to float within. There’s a dialogue happening here, back and forth between the artist and the work, which is full of chance encounters and happy accidents. It reminds me of Franz Kline's work, but with a sunny disposition. It makes you think about the conversation between painters across time, each riffing off each other’s ideas, pushing the boundaries of what painting can be. I think we can all agree, painting is not dead!