OPALKA 1965/1

One spring morning in 1965, Roman Opałka conceived the idea of using paint to materialize the irreversible nature of time. This marked the beginning of the great work that would occupy him for the rest of his career, OPALKA 1965 / 1 - ∞, a series of numbers painted in a succession of pictures that he called “details.” The first begins, naturally, with the number 1 and in 1972, when Opałka reached the number 1,000,000, he decided to add an additional 1% of white to the paint mixture he used as a background for each new painting he started.

While his earlier works were composed of relatively dark tones, his later paintings in the series became lighter and paler, gradually approaching a monochromatic white. The three paintings hanging on the wall, near his self-portrait, on which the numbers, meticulously painted in white on a white background, are barely distinguishable, are a testament to this. Opałka produced a total of 231 paintings between 1965 and his death in 2011. His final canvas in the series ends on the number 5,607,249. The octagonal architectural device that houses seven works from the series was conceived by the artist himself as the spatial representation of “the space-time of an existence.”1 We hear a recording of Opałka’s voice reciting a series of numbers as he paints them. This aural dimension, like his paintings, reflects the artist’s desire to capture and freeze the inexorable passage of time. 

The Pinault Collection first showed this work in 2023 at the Punta della Dogana  in Venice, as part of the exhibition Icones.