Filed under: Art World, DC | Tags: Blinky Palermo, CCS Bard, DC, DIA Art Foundation, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Joseph Beuys, Lynne Cooke, Matthew Smith
Blinky Palermo, Untitled, 1964 | Oil on canvas, 37 3/8 x 31 3/4 inches. Collection Ströher, Darmstadt. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: Jens Ziehe.
The work of German artist Blinky Palermo (1943-1977) can be generally classified into four cohesive groupings: Objects, Stoffbilder (Cloth Pictures), Wall Drawings and Paintings, and Metal Pictures. Like his contemporaries Frank Stella, Robert Ryman, and Richard Tuttle, Palermo interest lied in probing the conceptual limits of painting by exploring unconventional materials, and he did so with an uncommon curiosity for the wide-ranging strategies of his peers and predecessors. Joseph Beuys, his mentor and instructor at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, labeled Palermo’s openness to a variety of media as “porosity.” Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964-1977, currently on display at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., provides an opportunity for closer inspection of the artist’s ambitious technical versatility. —Matthew Smith, D.C. Contributor
