Ivan PICELJ (1924, Zagreb – 2011, Zagreb)

Title: II neg
Medium: Silkscreen on paper
Dimensions: 50.5 × 49.5 cm (without margins); 64 × 50 cm (with margins)
Edition: Numbered 41/50, signed lower right “Picelj Yvan”
Collection: One copy held in the Centre national des arts plastiques (FNAC 28775)

Description and Critical Analysis

In II neg, Ivan Picelj explores the geometric rigor and optical vibration characteristic of Concrete Art and Op Art. The work presents a grid of regular circles arranged on a stark black background. Each circle is filled with oblique or horizontal striations, introducing subtle rhythmic variations. The contrast between the orientations of these lines—sometimes diagonal, sometimes horizontal—creates a moiré effect, generating an optical tremor that unsettles the viewer’s perception.

The black-and-white monochromy reinforces the experimental nature of the piece: the impact depends entirely on retinal effect, without the seduction of color. Here, mathematical precision merges with optical sensitivity, producing an image that functions less as a representation than as a perceptual mechanism. Picelj invites the viewer to lose themselves in the tension between repetition and variation, order and disruption.

This silkscreen epitomizes Picelj’s aesthetic project: to rationalize pictorial space, reduce the artwork to its essential elements (form, rhythm, structure), and probe the very conditions of vision.

Biographical Note

Ivan Picelj (1924–2011), a major figure of Concrete Art and the Croatian avant-garde, was born in Zagreb. He was a co-founder of the EXAT 51 group in the 1950s, which championed a new aesthetic uniting art, architecture, and design, and advocated for a strict fidelity to geometric abstraction.

A versatile artist, Picelj worked across painting, sculpture, graphic design, and publishing. His visual language is marked by modular structures and geometric permutations. Closely associated with the international New Tendencies movement, he took part in the pan-European dialogues that redefined the codes of postwar abstraction, alongside artists such as Victor Vasarely and François Morellet.

His works have been exhibited in major international shows devoted to Concrete and Op Art and are housed in numerous public collections, including the Centre national des arts plastiques (France). Picelj remains a singular voice in 20th-century art history: an artist of rigor and clarity, for whom painting becomes a universal language—mathematical, perceptual, and timeless.