Eulogy

Ross Bleckner is an American painter whose work explores memory, loss and spirituality. Trained in California under the influence of conceptual art, he established his career in the New York art scene of the 1980s. At the end of that decade, AIDS’ devastating impact on his immediate environment led Bleckner to create a series of seemingly cold, abstract paintings, influenced by op art. However, these are works that emerge from the collective and personal trauma of a generation marked by loss. In this context, stripes become surfaces of mourning: modulated planes in which pain is hinted at without being fully revealed; where repetition takes on a funereal, almost ritualistic rhythm. The piece’s vertical format, like a funeral procession, evokes a memorial’s solemnity, without renouncing the fragility of intimacy.

Raúl Martínez Arranz