Robert Mangold

Galerie Meert-Rihoux, Brussels
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1998

Brussels, Galerie Meert-Rihoux, Robert Mangold: Zone Paintings, 1998

Renate Pentzinger and Susanna Singer (eds.), Robert Mangold, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings 1982-1998, Wiesbaden 1998, p. 215, no. 1006, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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As one of the preeminent minimalists of the 1960s, Robert Mangold’s canvasses feature the aesthetic simplicity and emphasis on the phenomenology of painting, yet unlike the work of many of his contemporaries, his paintings do not share the same reductive aesthetic that characterises much of the movement that he is associated with. Whereas the work of most minimalists naturally developed towards the monochrome, Mangold’s paintings retained a lyricism that distinctively set it apart from the other artists, with a continued insistence on line, colour and uniquely shaped canvasses. These three elements are at the core of the Zone paintings, of which Orange-Brown/Black Zone painting VII, Study is an excellent example.

Begun in 1996, the Zone paintings perfectly capture Mangold’s idiosyncratic practice. Constructed simultaneously as images and objects, the compositions of this series emphasise both the painting’s material condition – a key concern of 1960s minimalism – but also exploit this function for the creation of new images. By separating the composition of the image from the composition of the canvas, Mangold emphasises their independent functions. As Arthur Danto explained: “One could say that panels belong to the category of sculpture, zones to the category of painting, and while this may be too rigid a way of allocating things, it is important to recognize that the Zone Paintings exist on two planes at once, and that their meaning is in some measure given by the interplay between these planes (...) The panels are painted the way physical surfaces are painted, being covered with paint. The zones are painted the way images are painted” (Arthur Danto, ‘The Zone Paintings’, Robert Mangold, London 2000, p. 146).

With its harmonious composition and the signature tilted oval lines, Orange-Brown/Black Zone painting VII is not only an outstanding example of the Zone paintings, but indeed of Mangold’s acclaimed practice as a whole.