Sans titre
Acrylic on canvas
100 × 100 cm (39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
A black circle breaks the perfect harmony of a monochrome square. This perfectly smooth, minimalist work seems to want to achieve degree zero of painting.
It belongs to a series Olivier Mosset painted between 1966 and 1974, when his aim was to objectify painting and make it as neutral as possible. For eight years, he reproduced 200 identical paintings of a black circle on a white background. His goal was to challenge the age-old principles of the art work’s uniqueness, originality and subjectivity. Based on the radical precepts of the BMPT group, which he co-founded, Mosset disembodied the painting until it disappeared.
Untitled will be exhibited for the first time by the Pinault Collection during the “Au-delà de la couleur” ("Beyond Colour") show at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes in June 2021.
