Painting & Space

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, numerous artists’ movements were concerned with a fundamental reorientation of painting in order to do justice to an industrialised, mechanised and profoundly modernised society. Following on from this, artists attempted to reexplore the limits and possibilities of painterly expression after the global caesura of 1945: What role should and can painting, as a historically far-reaching, classical form of expression, play in contemporary art? The artistic answer is manifold: they mount everyday objects on the canvas, perforate and cut them up or extend the artwork sculpturally into the space. In doing so, their art moves between the physical limits of the material and the conceptual possibilities of painting.