About the work

With deep, bright color echoing Piza’s famous deep incisions, this is a powerful work.

Piza’s work from 1953 to 1958 was predominantly organic and expressionist, echoing Max Ernst, for example. In the late 1950s an orderliness emerged, approaching the structural expression of Johnny Friedlaender, and by the early 1960s Piza found his voice in an earthy but orderly placement of shapes, almost always adorned by gouged triangles that created motion and energy (not unlike Robert Goodnough’s flying shards). In this work he achieves order by balance—a central axis, a large shape on one side balanced by the second side despite the size difference . . . or if not balanced, in equipoise.

This work was published by La Hune, the famous bookstore and arts space that was a second home to artists Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Sonia Delaunay, Max Ernst and authors André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and countless others. In fact, La Hune published some six dozen of Piza’s works, primarily in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Custom framed behind 99% UV-blocking art glass using strictly conservation-grade materials.