Marisa Merz
10 - Untitled, 2002−2003
Mixed media on paper,
Collection Merz, photo: Renato Ghiazza, courtesy Merz Foundation – Gladstone Gallery, New York – Thomas Dane Gallery, London © SIAE, Rome, 2024
From the mid-1970s onwards, Marisa Merz repeatedly depicted faces, hybrid figures that were frequently female and ephemeral. In this drawing, thanks to its delicate pencil strokes, numerous faces emerge amidst an amorphous circle of light. Merz repeatedly makes reference to the European history of art in her works. Here, for example, she has employed the sfumato technique that Leonardo da Vinci was renowned for – blurring the materials in order to play with light and shadow and create depth. Merz succeeds in transporting us into another, intangible, transcendent reality.
The surface of the drawing evokes water or a mirror in which our gaze gets lost. Is it our reflection that we are looking at, blurred and unclear? The gold dust also evokes the art of the Byzantine icons that Merz loved so much.