About the work
Light and energy, movement and rhythm, texture and vibration, the central themes in the oeuvre of the artist for many years, are directly tangible in this delicate, warm pastel from 2014. Heinz Mack, also a trained pianist, brings the musical chromaticism to paper with the help of a rhythmically orchestrated series of colourful shades. In the progression from green through yellow to orange and finally to dark red, the neighbouring colours of the spectrum establish themselves in stages from the bottom upward – strips of colour vibrating in transition, weaved loosely into one another and successively building on one another. In this way, the painting begins to vibrate, conveys a dynamic shimmer, appears to radiate outward from inside.
The artist comprehends colour as an emanation of light, the colour intensity always as the intensity of light. He already expressed his thoughts in 1992, and these can still claim validity for his work today: “Because colour is always light and light is always colour for me, which I attempt to capture and design in my chromatics, the term colour intensity is always also a qualitative term. In my chromatic paintings, forms only have the significance of a rhythmic boundary, within which light can appear as colour. In order that I can be open to the adventure of pure painting, the form of the boundary must be as simple or as open as possible.”
(Doris Hansmann)
