"Expanding Color Painting is an extremely attractive mélange of motifs recalling those in Gorky's late paintings, and it even approximates the chromatic tonalities of The Betrothal II.”
Holland Cotter, "George Condo at Pace," Art in America, May 1988

As George Condo has cited “abstractions are pictures of the artist's mind” and the present lot, Expanding Color Painting, 1987 is an example of Condo’s most vivid imagination. Bulbous, natural forms rendered in primary reds, yellow, greens and blues seem to grow upward from the lower quadrant of the composition. Swirling like colorful ivy, crawling across the creamy background Condo has created an intricate pattern of delicate modular structures emerging at various stages of formation, slowly rising to the surface of the composition. A blend of historical references can be seen, from Gorky’s breakthrough series entitled Garden in Sochi to Joan Miró’s surrealist shapes, Condo places himself at the crux of New York’s 1980’s painterly revival.

The philosopher Félix Guattari, who lived on the Rue de Condé in the same building as Condo in the 1980’s when Expanding Color Painting was executed describes “a very specific 'Condo effect,’” stating that Condo “sacrifices everything to this effect, particularly pictorial structure, which he systematically destroys, thus removing a protective guardrail, a frame of reference which might reassure the viewer, who is denied access to a stable set of meanings." Expanding Color Painting, 1987 lies at the heart of Condo’s practice, a dive into the depths of what the artist refers to as “psychological cubism.”