7.7.08

WHAT DO YOU STILL HAVE TO OFFER ME?

On his own paintings, Siegfried Anzinger comments:
“After many large distemper paintings, the small, concentrated format, playing with short passes attracted me once again. Working against the grain is once again in play, like it always is with me, but this time it did not have to be struggled for so much. The lightness here came here by itself, perhaps because I have turned the tables in my relationship to painting. I did not want to demand anything of painting or to force anything in it. I did not try to offer something to painting or to say something to it, but rather, painting was asked to tell me something. What do you still have to offer me? was the question with which I got to work on canvases, just like in a game of chess played against yourself. For such an approach, the format of bozzetto, the oil study in a small format, was just the right thing. The fragmentary character of the bozzetti, their character as small draft models painted with a view to later works, to larger and `more important´ works gave me the freedoms that are to be seen here. Perhaps from this point, large formats will develop wich elaborate on these liberations.”