Martin Barre, 63-H, 1963
Published in ARTUNER, 03 February 2014
Transcending the period when modernist ideals gave way to a new set of aesthetic cues in contemporary art, Martin Barré’s (1924-1993) creative exploration of line, color, form and the two-dimensional surface is widely recognized as a milestone within the realm of art history. Presenting the viewer with a visual argument against the polite-passive intellectualism of traditional pictorial order, Barré’s oeuvre is mendaciously simple and minimalist. Communicating boundless variations of shapes and pigments within the self-imposed confines of the rectangular stretcher, his work investigates the delicate equilibrium that exists between notions of inner and outer space, figure and ground, completeness and provisionality.
