Composition 1966

Alexandre Istrati made this "Composition" with some kind of paint; oil, acrylic, I can't be sure. But he was clearly led by the material, and seems to have relished the hands-on aspect of artmaking. The surface is busy, almost agitated, with broad areas of colour intermingling with smaller more worked passages. There’s a tension between the intuitive and the calculated. The yellow bars look flat like they've been collaged onto the picture surface. But the textures throughout the rest of the painting are so tactile, with different paint handling techniques employed to create both depth and a sense of movement. Look at the bottom left, there's a passage of darker paint, greens and browns, with thin black lines scratched into the surface. This feels like a very deliberate act, a moment of control within the broader chaos of the image. In a way, I'm reminded of Guston's late work: the boldness of colour, and the playful sense of the absurd. But Istrati's painting is very much its own thing, an interesting statement in the ongoing dialogue of abstract painting.