X Painting Ⅰ (Red) X ペインティングⅠ（赤）

An X shape in red, or rather brick red, is constructed of two square canvases and an oblong one. The red X is not a form painted on a background of larger canvas; here the form is the canvas itself, and the background is the wall. A painting thus becomes an actual object existing upon the actual wall. This is a manner, called the shaped canvas, that came to be widely used in the 1960s. In this work, straight lines are drawn in pencil at the axes of the shape, forming another X. The X drawn in pencil is a figure against the background of the canvas. This makes the status of the three canvases ambiguous, as they are both the figure and the background. Mangold made himself known in the early 1960s as a practitioner of Minimal Art with his hardboard works which were incised on the surface and spray－painted. Later, he incorporated the Constructivist tradition in abstract painting as is represented by the work of Mondrian and Malevich into his art in his pursuit of new possibilities in painting. This work, which evokes complex relationships out of its very simple elements, shows his art one of its sophisticated heights.