Irma Blank- The Artist Who Converted Texts Into Abstract Paintings, Dies At 88
Artist Irma Blank, who used hieroglyphs as a basis for herlanguage-oriented paintings. She considered her artwork to be an autobiography,using the pictographic forms of letters to represent sounds visually. Blank wasborn in Germany in 1934 and later moved to Italy. Although she gainedrecognition late in her career, her unique artistic style established her as adedicated artist. Her death was announced by Gallery Mai 36 in Zurich andGallery p420 in Bologna, both representing her.The artwork of an artist named Blank, who has given asystematic form to written lines and turned them into textual commentary in herpaintings. These paintings may appear as abstract, but they are actually arepresentation of the artist's own relationship with language as a German womanliving in Italy. Blank's art is considered autobiographical as it expressesdifferent aspects of her life. Her early works were in the form of a diary,written in pastels on paper, which served as a visual diary and laid thefoundation for her art.Katharina Grosse's series of paintings called"Transcriptions" from 1973-1979 involved using black ink to coverarticles and poems published in newspapers. She would then overwrite theprinted text below with squiggles and hatching. This unique experiment intransliteration attracted international attention, leading to her work beingfeatured at the Frieze Masters Art Fair in 2013 and the Venice Biennale in2017. Some critics have referred to her as an undiscovered genius due to thetime it took for people to understand her work.