Good condition.
Signed and dated on the center of lower part.

There is peeling of the folded paper on the upper left edge.
There is a trace of glue on the upper part of the verso.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, Blinky Palermo (1943-1977) entered the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1962 and studied under the tutelage of Joseph Beuys from 1964. Among his fellow students were figures such as Sigmar Polke, Imi Knoebel and Gerhard Richter. Palermo’s artistic interests, as well as the influence of the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, led him to explore the fundamental nature of painting, focusing on the rectangularity of painting, the relationship between color and form, and the conflict between image and object. The result of which is embodied in his works from his seminal ‘Stoffbilder (fabric painting)’ and ‘Metalbilder (metal painting)’ series. As well as these works, Palermo also produced a prolific number of drawings throughout his short life, which, as in the case of his paintings, fundamentally questioned the conventions of drawing, whilst taking advantage of the properties of paper as a material and medium.

This work on paper is one such example. This work is an approximately B1 size piece of brown paper folded three times that has been reopened, folded in half and cut to reveal the bottom layer of the paper. In the small uncut area at the bottom left of the large cut-out surface, there are a series of numbers that look like notes written on the surface with a felt-tip pen. In contrast, the large cut-out space above exposes the bottom layer of paper, drawing attention to its materiality through the display of creases where the paper was folded, and the fundamental properties of paper that are intrinsic to the existence of this work. This work therefore could not exist without paper as a material and is an excellent demonstration of Palermo’s formative strategy.

Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne
Helmut Anton and Margot Krätz, Frankfurt
Sotheby's, New York
Private Collection, Japan

"Blinky Palermo: Complete Works", Octagon Press, 1995, no.392