Untitled (Violet) (1997) by Michel Majerus (b. 1967, Luxembourg – d. 2002, Niederanven) is a non-figurative, gestural work that appears initially to refer to the language of abstract expressionism. Yet the area of pictorial action is confined to the upper left corner of the canvas, drawing attention to the splashes of paint, and revealing the process of painting. The ‘splash’ motif, which is recurrent in Majerus’ work, alludes to the frantic pace of our modern world and to the pace of visual acceleration in the information age.

Despite the brevity of his career, Majerus built an international reputation, becoming renowned for his large- format paintings that draw upon the colourful iconography of advertising, comic strips and digital art, along with the vocabulary of Pop Art and gestural abstraction. This piece, which is deceptively impulsive in appearance, is the result of a carefully thought out and premeditated execution. What Majerus presents with irony to the viewer is not an abstract painting but the image of an abstract painting, in which spontaneity is staged.