The 1968 painting “Puzzle II” marks a pivotal phase in Piero Dorazio’s “la nuova pittura”—a work that illustrates a programmatic shift in his oeuvre. Dorazio, who co-founded the pioneering group “Forma 1” in Rome in 1947 and championed autonomous, non-representational art early on, distanced himself from Italian Futurism after 1945 because of conflicting political views. Through a critical engagement with the history of painting since Impressionism, he explored new paths toward abstraction in European art. Following stays in the United States in the 1950s, during which he became acquainted with Abstract Expressionist artists and Marc Rothko’s Color Field Painting, he was appointed to a teaching post at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 and exhibited at documenta in Kassel in both 1959 and 1964. As a bridge between European formal discipline and American color experiments, he played a key role on the international stage.

While Dorazio’s imagery remained defined by the “Reticoli”—net-like structures composed of fine colored stripes—until 1963, he gradually began to open up his pictorial spaces starting in 1963. The works from this period distinguish themselves from the reductive approaches of visual art studies and systemic painting, as well as from trends in media-based visual reflection. When he worked in West Berlin in 1968— on a DAAD fellowship at the age of 41—he entered “a particularly fruitful creative period” (Thomas Kempas, Peter Nestler, foreword to the exhibition at the Haus am Waldsee in 1969). In Berlin, the artist devised sophisticated systems consisting of parallel bands of color, curved wave motifs, and puzzle pieces reminiscent of inlays.

“Puzzle II” exemplifies this principle: Instead of dense grid structures, monochromatic color fields interlock like puzzle pieces. The chromatic segments overlap and intertwine to form rhythmic structures of increasing scale, creating a fluid, architectural spatial order. Through the deliberate juxtaposition of pure primary colors, the painting unfolds vibrant dynamics: Dorazio redefines the supremacy of color as a formative force and fulfills his maxim that color is a fundamental spatial and expressive value in painting (Dorazio, in: Exhibition catalog, Galerie im Erker 1966, no page).

In this sense, “Puzzle II” epitomizes the moment when a compact grid structure gives way to an open, rhythmic composition of color fields. The work underscores Piero Dorazio’s status as a defining innovator of European abstraction. [AW]