Jonathan Lasker’s (1948) abstract works draw their inspiration from various formal sources, from Mondrian to Pollock and from ’50s geometric abstraction to Pop Art.

In Artistic Painting, however, the painter develops a unique approach to abstract painting. Drawing acquires a new scale through the enlargement of scribbles initially drawn in a sketchbook. Thus, the motif initially traced with a felt pen becomes a flow of salient matter that is the only coloured part of the composition. These diverse elements (grids, arabesques and knots) can be perceived as narrative sequences that then compose a formal syntax which cannot be read, however, according to the discursive principle of written narratives. Lines and planes and colours and shapes associated with the trace of the paintbrush form visual phrases that contain as much depth of meaning as a text. For Lasker, abstract painting allows us to question the human condition in a more removed and non-literary way. But, rather than procuring immediate answers, his work firstly offers a dialogue with the viewer.