Roma XIII, 1958
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Frame (light wood): 56 3/4 × 41 1/4 × 1 3/8 in. (144.15 × 104.78 × 3.49 cm) Image: 55 1/4 x 41 1/4 in. (140.34 x 104.78 cm)
- Accession Number
- 95.8
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Ruth and Murray Gribin
Though the color palette of Emerson Woelffer’sRoma XIIIis dark, muddy, and muted, there is a lightness to the casual application of paint. This sense of ease is most palpable in the letter forms, which the artist scratched onto the surface with a paintbrush handle. The large, central white “X,” the black inscription “Roma XIII,” and the illegible scribble have the relaxed character of a grocery list or a quick, unplanned note. Inspired by the improvisational structure of jazz, as well as European surrealist artists’ techniques for painting in a spontaneous, automatic manner, Woelffer approached his canvases without preconception, commenting, “first I paint, then I think.” His script style further flattens out the solid, abstract shapes underneath by treating them as a two-dimensional writing surface.
