Henri Matisse, The Snail 1953. Tate.
12 rooms in In the Studio
Artists in this room demonstrate different ways they approach painting as an action, emphasising the processes and materials they use in their work
The rise of abstraction in 20th-century art opened up new possibilities for painters. They could now convey meaning without having to depict recognisable figures, actions or emotions. Instead they could express themselves freely through brushstrokes or colour alone. Some articulated their inner mental states through the gestures they used to apply paint onto the canvas. Others experimented with materials, giving depth and texture to the surface of their paintings. The years following the Second World War saw a particular growth in these forms of abstraction across the globe, with movements spanning from abstract expressionism in North America to the avant-garde group Gutai in Japan.
In response to these art movements, artists began to produce works that reflected or parodied the earlier artists’ dramatic physical actions and gestures. Niki de Saint Phalle took expressive action to a violent extreme by using a rifle to puncture bags of coloured paint that dripped down the surface of her Shooting Pictures. Other painters’ actions were more conceptual or meditative. Joan Snyder covered her ‘Stroke Paintings’ in arrays of different types of brush marks, like classification charts or exercises. In his From Line paintings, Lee Ufan gave a visual form to the duration of a brushstroke, painting repeated straight lines until he used up the pigment on his brush.
Over time, many painters have also confronted the spread of image-making technologies and what they mean for traditional art forms. To create her recent paintings, Jacqueline Humphries combines analogue and digital techniques. She makes works that show her hybrid creative process through overlapping layers and surfaces that vibrate and shimmer like video screens.
Tomie Ohtake, Untitled (from the series Blind Paintings) 1962
Untitled 1962 is an oil painting with an abstract composition consisting of a large central spiral where ripples of layered white and blue paint converge, recalling some form of cosmic phenomenon. The thin layers of paint have been meticulously overlaid in order to achieve a complex layering which reveals the artist’s characteristically painstaking and methodical process. Ohtake allowed natural rhythm to infuse her compositions whilst at the same time tempering them. Like all of her works, this painting is left untitled. The Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920–1988) stated of her friend’s work, ‘A painting by Tomie has no title. It is.’ (Lygia Clark quoted in Instituto Tomie Ohtake 2009, p.71.) Though born in Japan, Ohtake moved to Brazil in 1936 and this painting would have been made there.
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Ida Cadorin Barbarigo, Promenade 1963
Promenade 1963 is an oil painting composed of a number of overlapping lines that have an organic, calligraphic appearance, over a plain background. The overall tone of the painting is muted, with the dark marks standing out against the lighter ground. Seen within the context of the title and Barbarigo’s earlier paintings which depict empty tables and chairs (see for example and Chairs 1954 [Tate T14955] and Tables and Chairs II 1954 [T14956]), the subject in Promenade reveals itself as a number of loosely depicted circular tables of the type set up outside pavement cafés in European cities with empty chairs set around them. The view is a high one, giving the impression of looking down on the scene, and the brushstrokes depicting the outlines of the chairs and tables are fluid, reminiscent of the painterly surfaces of art informel. The composition is asymmetrical, seemingly cut off by the frame at the top right and at the bottom of the canvas. This choice enhances the ambiguity of the image, as the signs composing it appear suspended between abstraction and the representation of an observed scene.
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Henri Matisse, The Snail 1953
After 1948, Henri Matisse was confined to bed due to ill health. Though he could no longer paint, he produced many works by cutting or tearing shapes from paper painted in bright colours. An assistant then pasted the cut-outs on a white sheet following his instructions. Matisse found this technique liberating: ‘Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it ... I draw straight into the colour.’ Matisse got the idea for this composition while drawing a snail. ‘I became aware of an unrolling, I found an image in my mind purified of the shell, then I took the scissors.’
Gallery label, April 2025
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Jacqueline Humphries, ~?j.h% 2018
This work derives from a photograph Humphries scanned of one of her earlier paintings and turned into digital code using seven characters: ~, ?, j, J, H, h and %. She then made this code into a stencil, produced from a laser-cut sheet of rubber, which she used to create ~?j.h%. She applied a layer of black oil paint through the stencil, then a layer of red, moving the stencil between applications. She painted over these rows of computer-generated characters in long diagonal brushstrokes and areas of thick white paint. The result is a mix of mechanical translations and direct physical gestures.
Gallery label, February 2024
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Niki de Saint Phalle, Shooting Picture 1961
To make her Shooting Pictures, Saint Phalle filled polythene bags with paint and enclosed them within layers of plaster and chicken wire that created a textured white surface. She invited spectators to shoot at these constructions, releasing the paint. Saint Phalle considered these shootings to be performances, or ‘happenings’, which she saw as integral parts of the work just as much as the finished product. This one was shot by North American artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Saint Phalle stopped making these works in 1970, explaining ‘I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug’.
Gallery label, February 2024
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Lee Ufan, From Line 1978
This work belongs to a series that Lee made by tracing long lines until he used up the paint on the brush. He laid the canvas horizontally and carefully controlled his breathing during each of these slow markmaking gestures. Describing his method, Lee wrote: ‘Load the brush and draw a line. At the beginning it will appear dark and thick, then it will get gradually thinner and finally disappear ... A line must have a beginning and an end. Space appears within the passage of time, and when the process of creating space comes to an end, time also vanishes.’
Gallery label, February 2024
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artworks in Painterly Gestures
Art in this room
Tomie Ohtake
Untitled (from the series Blind Paintings)
1962
Ida Cadorin Barbarigo
Promenade
1963
Henri Matisse
The Snail
1953
Jacqueline Humphries
~?j.h%
2018
Niki de Saint Phalle
Shooting Picture
1961
Lee Ufan
From Line
1978