Committee to Rescue Italian Art benefit lecture series 1967

This poster by Dietmar Winkler announces the Committee to Rescue Italian Art benefit lecture series. The ground is dark, maybe brown or black, and the marks are light, white almost, and laid down horizontally in an organized way. The process of making the image must have been a process of slowly building up marks, each one responding to the last. I sympathize with Winkler, trying to find the right balance between clarity and visual interest. What was he thinking when he made it? Did he ever feel stuck, unsure of where to go next? The texture is smooth, the surface seemingly flat and even. The gestures, those horizontal lines, communicate a sense of calm, of stability. It feels like a cousin to the work of other graphic designers, but it has its own unique sensibility. Artists are always in conversation with one another, borrowing and building on each other’s ideas. Painting is a form of embodied expression, it embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.