Philosophy
Roman Opalka
August 27th, 1931 to August 6th, 2011
The Polish painter Roman Opalka, who painted an uninterrupted series of numbers across hundreds of canvases, over the course of more than 45 years, and became a leading figure in European Conceptual art, died on Saturday, in Italy, according to the Hurriyet Daily News. He was 79.
In 1965, Opalka embarked on his lifelong work, 1965/1 to Infinity, for which he painted white numbers in long rows across a gray background. When he ran out of space on one canvas, he picked up the series on another. “[M]y hand trembled before the hugeness of the task, this little 1, this radical commitment to the first instant of irreversible time,” Opalka once recalled, describing the moment he embarked on his massive project.
Seven years after beginning the series, he passed the number one million and began taking photographic self-portraits after the completion of each of his works.
Adopting this rigorously serialized approach, Opalka aligned himself with many other artists of the time who explored making art through systems and mathematics, like the French artist Daniel Buren (who paints stripes), the Japanese-American artist On Kawara (who paints the date he makes his paintings) and the German artist Hanne Darboven (whose drawings record long streams of mathematical computations).
Opalka was born in 1931 to Polish parents and lived in Germany, the United States, Poland and France, where he eventually settled in 1977. He participated in many of the art world’s most important international exhibitions, including Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1977; the Sao Paolo Bienal in 1987; and the Venice Biennale, in 1995 and 2003. He had one-person shows in New York at Yvon Lambert Gallery and John Weber Gallery.
“We will miss him,” the Yvon Lambert Gallery, now based solely in Paris, said in a statement. The gallery emphasized that he had “bridged classical painting and conceptual art perfectly, and with absolutely no compromise.”
“Opalka’s work, a methodical transcription of the passing of time, is circumscribed within his own life and will end only with the artist’s death,” writer Marco Pierini once said, “when the last of the painted numbers will not be followed by another one and the counting will be interrupted. This will leave the work not unfinished, but perfect.”
According to Polskie Radio, the first painting in Opalka’s lengthy painting series is in the Art Museum in Pódz', Poland, which will also be given his final work.
Roman Opalka, a leading conceptual artist who, beginning with the numeral one in 1965, methodically painted consecutive numbers on canvas in a march toward infinity, died on Saturday near Rome. He was 79.
The death was confirmed by Jean Poderos, his publisher. Agence France-Presse reported that Slawomir Boss, his agent, told Polish newspapers that Mr. Opalka had fallen ill while in Italy and died of a “generalized infection” at a hospital near Rome.
Mr. Opalka, who had lived and worked in France since 1977, embarked on his quixotic project while working as an artist in Warsaw. Starting at the top left of a canvas measuring a little over four by six feet, and using acrylic paint, he used a fine brush (No. 0) to inscribe 20,000 to 30,000 white numerals on a black background in neat rows that ended at the bottom right corner. Each succeeding canvas, or “detail” as he called it, picked up where the previous one left off. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.
In 1968 Mr. Opalka changed his background color to gray, and four years later, as he passed the one million mark, he began adding a tiny amount of white paint to the background color after each canvas to lighten it gradually. By 2008 he was painting white numerals on a white background whose color he called “blanc merité,” or “well-earned white.”
In 1972 he also began speaking each number into a tape recorder as he worked and taking passport-style photographs of himself in front of each canvas at the end of each work session.
All the paintings in the series bore the same title, "Opalka 1965/1 — ?." "All my work is a single thing, the description from one to infinity," Mr. Opalka once wrote. "A single thing, a single life."
Roman Opalka was born on Aug. 27, 1931, to Polish émigrés in Hocquincourt, in northern France. The family returned to Poland in 1935, only to be deported to Germany after the Nazi invasion.
After being liberated by the United States Army, they returned to Poland, where Mr. Opalka studied lithography at a graphics school before enrolling in the School of Art and Design in Lodz. He later earned a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and began producing white monochrome paintings.
Five years after executing his first numeral painting, he ceased all other work and devoted himself fulltime to the pursuit of infinity. In 2010, Christie’s sold three of his number paintings as a unit for $1.3 million.
In anticipation of his 80th birthday, several exhibitions were organized in France and Italy and a collection of his self-portraits was published by Éditions Courts et Longues.
Mr. Opalka, who lived in Teillé, near Le Mans, and Venice, is survived by his wife, Marie-Madeleine.
Though his artistic quest might have seemed bloodless and abstract, Mr. Opalka described it, passionately, as a grand metaphor for human existence. “Time as we live it and as we create it embodies our progressive disappearance,” he wrote in an essay in 1987. “We are at the same time alive and in the face of death — that is the mystery of all living beings.”
Roman Opalka [Wikipedia]
Roman Opalka [Official Website]
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Philosophy
Deceased--Roman Opalka
Roman Opalka
August 27th, 1931 to August 6th, 2011
"Roman Opalka, Artist Who Painted Millions of Numbers, Dies at 79"
by
Andrew Russeth
August 9th, 2011
The New York Observer
by
Andrew Russeth
August 9th, 2011
The New York Observer
The Polish painter Roman Opalka, who painted an uninterrupted series of numbers across hundreds of canvases, over the course of more than 45 years, and became a leading figure in European Conceptual art, died on Saturday, in Italy, according to the Hurriyet Daily News. He was 79.
In 1965, Opalka embarked on his lifelong work, 1965/1 to Infinity, for which he painted white numbers in long rows across a gray background. When he ran out of space on one canvas, he picked up the series on another. “[M]y hand trembled before the hugeness of the task, this little 1, this radical commitment to the first instant of irreversible time,” Opalka once recalled, describing the moment he embarked on his massive project.
Seven years after beginning the series, he passed the number one million and began taking photographic self-portraits after the completion of each of his works.
Adopting this rigorously serialized approach, Opalka aligned himself with many other artists of the time who explored making art through systems and mathematics, like the French artist Daniel Buren (who paints stripes), the Japanese-American artist On Kawara (who paints the date he makes his paintings) and the German artist Hanne Darboven (whose drawings record long streams of mathematical computations).
Opalka was born in 1931 to Polish parents and lived in Germany, the United States, Poland and France, where he eventually settled in 1977. He participated in many of the art world’s most important international exhibitions, including Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1977; the Sao Paolo Bienal in 1987; and the Venice Biennale, in 1995 and 2003. He had one-person shows in New York at Yvon Lambert Gallery and John Weber Gallery.
“We will miss him,” the Yvon Lambert Gallery, now based solely in Paris, said in a statement. The gallery emphasized that he had “bridged classical painting and conceptual art perfectly, and with absolutely no compromise.”
“Opalka’s work, a methodical transcription of the passing of time, is circumscribed within his own life and will end only with the artist’s death,” writer Marco Pierini once said, “when the last of the painted numbers will not be followed by another one and the counting will be interrupted. This will leave the work not unfinished, but perfect.”
According to Polskie Radio, the first painting in Opalka’s lengthy painting series is in the Art Museum in Pódz', Poland, which will also be given his final work.
"Roman Opalka, an Artist of Numbers, Is Dead at 79"
by
William Grimes
August 9th, 2011
The New York Times
by
William Grimes
August 9th, 2011
The New York Times
Roman Opalka, a leading conceptual artist who, beginning with the numeral one in 1965, methodically painted consecutive numbers on canvas in a march toward infinity, died on Saturday near Rome. He was 79.
The death was confirmed by Jean Poderos, his publisher. Agence France-Presse reported that Slawomir Boss, his agent, told Polish newspapers that Mr. Opalka had fallen ill while in Italy and died of a “generalized infection” at a hospital near Rome.
Mr. Opalka, who had lived and worked in France since 1977, embarked on his quixotic project while working as an artist in Warsaw. Starting at the top left of a canvas measuring a little over four by six feet, and using acrylic paint, he used a fine brush (No. 0) to inscribe 20,000 to 30,000 white numerals on a black background in neat rows that ended at the bottom right corner. Each succeeding canvas, or “detail” as he called it, picked up where the previous one left off. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million.
In 1968 Mr. Opalka changed his background color to gray, and four years later, as he passed the one million mark, he began adding a tiny amount of white paint to the background color after each canvas to lighten it gradually. By 2008 he was painting white numerals on a white background whose color he called “blanc merité,” or “well-earned white.”
In 1972 he also began speaking each number into a tape recorder as he worked and taking passport-style photographs of himself in front of each canvas at the end of each work session.
All the paintings in the series bore the same title, "Opalka 1965/1 — ?." "All my work is a single thing, the description from one to infinity," Mr. Opalka once wrote. "A single thing, a single life."
Roman Opalka was born on Aug. 27, 1931, to Polish émigrés in Hocquincourt, in northern France. The family returned to Poland in 1935, only to be deported to Germany after the Nazi invasion.
After being liberated by the United States Army, they returned to Poland, where Mr. Opalka studied lithography at a graphics school before enrolling in the School of Art and Design in Lodz. He later earned a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and began producing white monochrome paintings.
Five years after executing his first numeral painting, he ceased all other work and devoted himself fulltime to the pursuit of infinity. In 2010, Christie’s sold three of his number paintings as a unit for $1.3 million.
In anticipation of his 80th birthday, several exhibitions were organized in France and Italy and a collection of his self-portraits was published by Éditions Courts et Longues.
Mr. Opalka, who lived in Teillé, near Le Mans, and Venice, is survived by his wife, Marie-Madeleine.
Though his artistic quest might have seemed bloodless and abstract, Mr. Opalka described it, passionately, as a grand metaphor for human existence. “Time as we live it and as we create it embodies our progressive disappearance,” he wrote in an essay in 1987. “We are at the same time alive and in the face of death — that is the mystery of all living beings.”
Roman Opalka [Wikipedia]
Roman Opalka [Official Website]
- Deceased--raoul De Keyser
Raoul De Keyser 29 August 29th, 1930 to October 6th, 2012 "Raoul De Keyser, Belgian Abstract Painter, Dies at 82" by Roberta Smith October 16th, 2012 The New York Times Raoul De Keyser, a Belgian painter whose evocative, seemingly awkward abstractions...
- Deceased--jan Sawka
Jan Sawka December 10th, 1946 to August 23rd, 2012 "PASSINGS: Jan Sawka" Jan Sawka, Polish-born poster artist and architect, dies at 65 August 12th, 2012 Los Angeles Times Jan Sawka, 65, a noted Polish American artist and architect whose designs included...
- Deceased--theodore Lux Feininger
Theodore Lux Feininger June 11th, 1910 to July 7th, 2011 "T. Lux Feininger, Photographer and Painter, Dies at 101" by William Grimes July 13th, 2011 The New York Times T. Lux Feininger, a painter and photographer who, as a young student at the Bauhaus,...
- Deceased--nassos Daphnis
Nassos Daphnis [Right] with Nikiforos Vrettakos Summer 1988 Nassos Daphnis July 23rd, 1914 to November 23rd, 2010 "Nassos Daphnis, an Artist of Geometry, Dies at 96" by William Grimes December 12th, 2010 The New York Times Nassos Daphnis, a Greek-American...
- Astronomy...art
"Astronomy solves puzzles posed by artists such as Hamlet and Van Gogh" by Jonathan Leake and Maurice Chittenden Februray 14th, 2010 TIMESONLINE A team of art sleuths has turned to astronomy and mathematical formulas to crack a string of historical...