Relief (Flour) 1990

This painting, Relief (Flour), was made by Constantin Flondor, and it’s an explosion of grey and white paint on canvas. I can almost see the studio, and the artist, Flondor, building up this dense impasto, one stroke at a time. I imagine he started with a dark ground, laying down the night, then letting the white emerge—a cloud, a planet, or maybe a memory. I feel the push and pull of the brush, the way the paint clumps and spreads. See that small, soft touch of red on the right? It’s like a heartbeat, adding warmth to the cool palette. It’s the kind of gesture you make unconsciously, with total intention. Flondor is in conversation with other painters, from Van Gogh to Auerbach, all wrestling with paint and the weight of their feelings. It reminds us that painting is this embodied act, full of mistakes and surprises, and it’s never really finished, because we keep looking, keep feeling, and keep changing.