1959-65 | Period "Écritures en masse"

"On the face of the canvas, the centre presents itself as a maelstrom, abyss, vortex, delving into the depths of the work, moving and opening, forming and coming undone while constituting itself. Thus, it establishes a space in which the centre is everywhere and the periphery, nowhere."
Marcelin Pleynet, Reigl, Paris, Ed. Biro, 2001, p34

                   Exhibition "Judit Reigl", Galerie de France, Paris 2006 © Photo P.H.Müller

"Painting is positioned through masses on a canvas. I bought a material normally used by masons – a ground black pigment that dries slowly, in depth, over the span of years, which meant that I was always working on six or eight paintings at a time. Starting from a white background, I put clumps of paint on the canvas using a flexible and rounded blade, or, sometimes, a simple wooden stick, “raising” them up from the bottom to the top of the canvas, covering the lighter colours underneath with this black pigment. I could tell immediately whether it was successful or a failure, in which case, there was no way of correcting it."
Unfolding: A Conversation Between Jean-Paul Ameline and Judit Reigl, Art in America international review, April 3rd, 2009

“Starting in 1955, automatic writing is deployed on very large formats as a continuous writing on a white ground— a discontinuous script that incorporates technical accidents (the slips of the hand), makes use of emptiness (the white of the background), and of gaps (the blank spaces in the line). This work yields four series (Éclatements, 1955–58; Centres de dominance, 1958–1959; Écriture en masse, 1959–65; Expérience d’apesanteur, 1965–66), in which an alternating movement from one to the next is established, oscillating between the grouping and dispersal of the centers, culminating in a first reversal: black around / emptied center; white ground brought to the fore.”

Jacques Schmitt, in the catalogue of the exhibition Judit Reigl, Rétrospective, Rennes, Maison de la Culture, 1974