Details
The image
A surface covered in small repeated marks, their spacing uneven, the colour built up in patches so that the field is dense at the centre and thinner at the edges. Nothing depicts anything and the sheet reads as a record of a gesture repeated until it became a texture.
Where it comes from
The poster belongs to the exhibition work of Simon Hantaï, whose method involved folding and knotting a canvas before painting it, so that the pattern was decided by the folds rather than by the hand. That practice began in the early 1960s and marked a break with the free gesture of the previous decade, the surface became a record of a system and the colour a result rather than a statement. The exhibition dates on the sheet belong to the late 1950s and 1960s, the years in which the method was worked out.
On the wall
It behaves like a textile, so it suits a study, a hallway or a living room with strong furniture, where a dense field reads as texture rather than as a picture. Because the colour is warm and even, it holds a large wall without needing company. In a group it should be the piece that provides density.
In company
Pairs well with plain materials and with photography in black and white and it looks best in a simple frame without a mount. Avoid hanging it beside a large flat colour, the repetition would stop reading as work. The Exhibition collection gathers prints made for the same kind of wall.
