Description
Christian Dotremont is central to CoBrA’s spirit of freedom and immediacy – alongside artists such as Pierre Alechinsky and Karel Appel – yet his contribution is uniquely linguistic. With the logogram, he invents a new kind of writing: a painted poem where the gesture of ink is as important as the words it once formed.
In this 1973 work, the script is deliberately distorted into a personal alphabet – letters stretched, broken, and recomposed into a single, dynamic field. It is not an image “of” something, but a record of an action: speed, pressure, breath, and pause, captured in the density and taper of the brushstroke.
Dotremont often insisted that logograms do not need to be “read” in the conventional sense. Their power sits in their material presence – graphical, tactile, and immediate – offering the viewer a direct encounter with writing as pure visual form.
Details
Artist: Christian Dotremont
Title: Logogram
Year: 1973
Medium/Technique: Silkscreen logogram
Dimensions (sheet/as presented): 42 × 28 cm
Edition: 9/15
Markings: Numbered 9/15 (front); signed by the artist (front); verso dated 1973 and signed verso by Guy Dotremont
Condition
Very good overall. Slight edge discolouration (approx. 3 mm on each side) from earlier framing; easily concealed with a passe-partout.
