Literature: Alfonso Ossorio et al., Alfonso Ossorio: 1940-1980, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, 1980, p. 64 (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

Ossorio’s famous Abstract Expressionist friends included Jackson Pollock — of the innovative pour and drip technique — and Helen Frankenthaler — of the soak stain method that was all her own. Ossorio had to find his own language: this work is inundated with organic expressions of intense blacks. The reconciliation of feeling and intellect in Ossorio lends particular fascination to experiencing the artist’s images. Letting things happen in painting then carefully controlling those happenings is the essence of his quest for a language, in both paint and words, that is uniquely his. Flowing organic forms, neutral colors, gripping energies. These saturated strokes of black with irregular edges. In fact, the work depicts Ossorio’s journey into pure non-objectivism and minimal color. Ossorio was once quoted: “I think the abstract expressionist movement was partly because a new mass of people were involved in art. Remember all the kids who came back from the war as GI students, the whole new interest of the public. This country was getting more and more prosperous and there was little art to speak of apart from the metropolitan areas. What could be better than a movement which told you to forget the past, to get out and express yourself? That I think is understandable. And it was a great liberating force. The mere fact that that had happened; when the reaction came it was a curious one. If one had wanted to plot what would happen as a reaction you could have almost diagrammed that it would be almost the opposite of self-expression.”