Secret 1966

Rodolfo Arico made ‘Secret’ with what looks like acrylic on paper, and I'm struck by how the title plays with the visual language of geometry. Look at the materiality of the image, it feels like a meditation on form, on line, and, of course, color. The pink is laid down pretty flatly, but it's also got these almost architectural underpinnings – faint perspective lines like the ghost of a blueprint. Then there's that yellow band, so solid, anchoring the whole thing. You can almost feel the artist considering the relationship between surface and structure as he painted, the back and forth between planning and intuition. It feels like a cousin to some of Agnes Martin’s quieter grids, where the process is laid bare, almost like a secret you’re in on.