Call For Entries: Color Block: Works Inspired by Blinky Palermo

Blinky Palermo’s brief life produced a body of work that questioned, challenged, and enriched abstraction and minimalism in the art world of the 1960’s and 70’s. His career began while still a student of Joseph Beuys, when he was inspired by his teacher to ‘change your art by changing yourself.’ In a brashly clever response typical of his Bauhaus education, he changed his name (it was Peter Heisterkamp), a re-branding strategy that set the stage for new discovery.

Palermo’s work was characterized by space and thoughtful spatial interplay between form and color. His best known early works, a series entitled “Cloth Paintings,” are simply rectangles of commercially produced fabric mechanically stitched together and placed on stretchers. Their simplicity belies their visual and conceptual impact. Scale, palette, and the literal absence of paint communicate a uniquely beautiful understanding of color/space and an intellectually playful relationship with his artist contemporaries. Later works experimented with other geometric shapes and culminated with a series of painted color-blocked aluminum panels, “Metal Pictures.”

Artists’ works for this call for entries should avoid imitation of Palermo, but rather celebrate and build on the abstract minimalism oeuvre as well as Palermo’s avant garde commentary on modern art. All media will be considered.