Plane/Figure Series (Double Panel) F

Mangold is part of the first generation of artists who adopted painting itself as their subject. A painting to him is simply a flat surface to which paint is applied. Stripped of illusion, it is the sum of its constituent parts: size, shape, surface, line, colour, texture, material and process. Halfway through the 1960s, the artist made his ‘shaped canvases’, paintings that were not the usual rectangular or square shape. During the second half of the 1980s, these ‘shaped canvases’ became multiple-part works. These works are geometric, abstract and almost always executed using just one colour.

The work Plane/Figure Series (Double Panel) F consists of two canvases, which together form a single irregular quadrilateral. The olive-green and brown-red colours emphasise the separate character of the two parts. The upper and lower edges of the diptych are parallel, while the oblique sides indicate a vanishing point outside the canvas. Two ellipses link the canvases and suggest space, as does the layering of the paint.