Painting #94048 1994

Rudolf de Crignis made Painting #94048 with paint, on what looks like a square canvas. I’m looking at the surface, it’s almost like a meditative act, this evenness of tone. I can imagine de Crignis applying the paint in layers, maybe he was thinking about how the color would shift and change depending on the light. It’s not a flat, dead color. It's got a real resonance. This violet-blue, feels both calm and intense. What does it mean to make a painting that's "just" color? The simplicity gets at something essential about what painting can be—an embodied experience of seeing and feeling. De Crignis was working in Europe, around the same time as other minimalists. I see a connection between them all, each one of them showing us how art is a conversation across time. A conversation, just like this, about the power of pure form.