Crucifixion 1965

Abdul Mati Klarwein made this painting of the Crucifixion using what looks like oil on board, in a triptych form. Look at all the figures. It feels as if the painting came into being through accumulation, like a garden, things keep growing and branching out. I imagine that when Klarwein was making this, he was thinking about the story of Christ, and about how all the stories we tell ourselves fit together. The gold leaf suggests Byzantine icons and old master paintings. But then the intimate scale, the figures wrestling, and the way the tree almost obscures what’s behind it, has something raw and modern about it. The lines are delicate. The colours feel like a hallucination or a dream. In places, the paint is thick and crusty, while elsewhere it's barely there at all, just a thin wash of colour. As a painter myself, I love seeing how artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time. This form of embodied expression embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations.