Tuesday, September 10, 2013

John Zurier

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I just came across a US artist John Zurier, and was taken by his beautiful 
paintings in his Muuratsalo series. Muuratsalo is an island in lake Päijänne in 
Finland where Alvar Aalto's Experimental House is situated (see here). In this 
series of Zurier there are also paintings called Paimio, Keuruu, Turku, Hattula 
and Raivola, other places in Finland (see here).



Zurier:

I remember the first painting problem
that really engaged me. I tried to paint 
the sky seen between two buildings so that
the whole of my painting would be 
nothing but an empty blue space. I wanted
the painting to be filled with a pale 
empty sky. I thought it would be very
easy to do, but found it nearly 
impossible. The painting was a failure
and I had to put it off for a long time.

In a way, my concerns now are not
much different in that I want the maximum 
sense of color, light, and space with the most
simple and direct means. I think 
the Japanese painter Ike No Taiga (1723–1776)
was right: the most difficult 
thing to achieve in painting is creating
a space where absolutely nothing has 
been painted.

John Zurier 
January 2008







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John Zurier
Muuratsalo 1, 2007, oil on linen, 84 x 58 inches
johnzurier.com
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John Zurier
Muuratsalo 2, 2008, oil on linen, 84 x 58 inches
johnzurier.com
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John Zurier
Muuratsalo 3, 2009, oil on linen, 84 x 58 inches
johnzurier.com
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John Zurier
Muuratsalo 4, 2009, oil on linen, 84 x 58 inches
johnzurier.com
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