Untitled
Marta Minujín Argentinian
While Minujín is perhaps best known for her sculpture and pioneering performance practice that emerged in the 1960s, Untitled is an important example of the early Informalist paintings she made beginning in the late 1950s. Composed of a moody, almost muddy palette and painted in a rough, brushy style, Untitled’s surface is built up and gritty—much like a relief. The rich abrasions and scrapes suggest a physicality inherent to Minujín’s process; the finished work becomes less about formal structure and more about the physical residue of its creation. Anticipating Minujín’s pronouncement in 1966, when she began her focused work on performance and sculpture, that painting was "dead," Untitled privileges the medium for its possibilities beyond the exploration of its two-dimensionality and the expressionistic use of color and form.