Tastemaker's Choice

Motherwell, one of the founding figures of Abstract Expressionism, could move from the politically charged Elegies to something almost entirely stripped down, yet equally intense. The black gesture against the warm pink tone feels both austere and sensual—like painting reduced to nerve, weight, and precision.

I chose this print because Celia Birtwell is a recurring figure in Hockney’s work, and the Moving Focus series marks the culmination of his experiments with a kind of pared-down Cubism. Here, the red becomes almost electric: the image is both intimate and restless, as if the face holds together a composition that is constantly trying to continue beyond the edge of the sheet.

Melgaard emerged in 1990s Norway in opposition to the neo-conceptualism of the time, and his work has often been read in relation to Munch’s spontaneous line and emotional charge. Here, the paint is pressed into thick, almost bodily forms—beautiful, violent, and uncomfortable all at once.

Gorchov is known, among other things, for his characteristic saddle- and shield-shaped canvases, developed from the late 1960s onward, which opened painting toward the object and space. Here, in the convex papier-mâché form, it is the pale pink surface and the two dark shapes that make the work strangely charged—restrained, tactile, and almost meditative.

Since the mid-1960s, Samuelson has worked with space as an idea, in the borderland between painting, installation, architecture, and design. The cool blue palette and the almost stage-like construction make the motif both meditative and artificial—like a place you see and at the same time enter.

A small study by Wesselmann, one of the leading figures of American Pop Art, who in his late Sunset Nudes returned to the nude with a freedom that clearly echoes Matisse and the odalisque. Despite its miniature format, the work is remarkably self-assured: the body becomes contour, fields of color, and rhythm, yet never loses its sensuality.