Anuszkiewicz was an integral member of the Op Art Movement, championing a visual style that made use of optical illusions. One of the foremost colorists in American art, Anuszkiewicz was mentored by Josef Albers, who influenced the young artist's interest in the effects of color on visual perception. Beginning in the 1960s, Anuszkiewicz created canvases boasting repetitive geometric patterns. A number of high profile exhibitions of his work at the Whitney during that decade sparked curatorial interest in his work. The exhibition Americans 1963 at the Museum of Modern Art, coupled with a Time Magazine article on the artist as well as the MOMA's 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye cemented Anuszkiewicz' status as one of the preeminent American Op artists, if not its leader.
With its crisply ordered diagonals and chromatic intensity, this painting exemplifies Richard Anuszkiewicz’s enduring exploration of optical dynamism. Here, the canvas is divided into two radiant triangular fields, their meeting line a fulcrum of energy. The interplay of green, red, and violet establishes a vibrant chromatic tension, while the fine yellow and blue linear elements animate the surface with shifting movement. What at first may appear as pure abstraction is, in fact, a deeply painterly investigation of figure-ground relationships and spatial depth, recalling the traditional concern with how color and form can build illusion. The composition pushes the eye across its diagonal divide, oscillating between advance and recession, flatness and volume. At once contained and expansive, this work demonstrates Anuszkiewicz’s precise control of geometry and color interaction to create an experience that is as perceptual as it is structural.
Private Collection, CT
Sotheby’s New York, 1995
Private Collection, OH
Private Collection, acquired from the above
Sotheby's NY March 2018
Taylor Graham, NY 2018-2020
Private collection San Francisco, CA 2020-2025
Madden, David and Nicholas Spike, Anuszkiewicz: Paintings and Sculptures 1945-2001, Florence, 2011, cat. no. 1968.52, p. 157