Figur 1956

The intensely coloured, early oil painting "Figure" was painted in the decisive years, 1956. It coincides with a period of lively exhibitions and the beginning of international attention. Works by Josef Mikl were already being shown at the Venice and São Paulo Biennials, as well as in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Milan and Tokyo. The title of the painting indicates that in his painting the artist always remains attached to the figurative as the starting point of his compositions. Josef Mikl himself says: "What you see, what you have seen, cannot be completely forgotten. That is why there are no contrived, no truly non-objective pictures. An object is what makes the picture meaningful." Yellow, orange and red squares come together to form a compact structure firmly anchored in the picture, its outline standing out sharply against the blue background. The form is not clearly legible and it is only through the title that different possibilities of association arise. The abstraction of seen forms brings an emancipation of artistic means. Colour and form become decisive and enable the artist to choose new paths, to transgress the boundaries of painting in the conventional sense and to help the representation to an independent existence. There are no longer images of reality; the aim is to create a new reality with painting. In the works of the 1950s, geometric forms still dominate, which Josef Mikl would later abandon in favour of freer brushstrokes.