Pink Image 1947

Istvan Ilosvai Varga made this painting titled "Pink Image" with oil on canvas. What strikes me is the all-overness of the color. It’s like he mixed up a big old vat of pinkish-red and then just went at it. You know, there’s no real hiding here. The process is right there on the surface. Look closely, you can see the texture of the canvas coming through, like the paint has been pushed around, scraped, and layered, almost fighting to find its place. See that thick line zig-zagging across the middle ground? It is almost like a structural beam holding the picture together but at the same time it threatens to break the surface apart. I’m thinking of artists like Guston and de Kooning who used abstraction to get at something raw and real. The painting is like a conversation, full of starts and stops, questions and answers.