Craig Kauffman began exhibiting increasingly ex-perimental paintings in Los Angeles in the 1950s, evidencing a newly cool, clean-edged sensibility that would soon be called the L.A. Look. During the 1960s, Kauffman turned to acrylic plastic as the primary supporting surface for his work. Compared to a traditional, stretched canvas support, in Le Mur s’en va I the plastic support is translucent, curving over on itself like a sheet of paper, and suspended away from the wall (as well as quite close to the floor). Indeed, the work’s French title indicates the wall “leaving” or “departing.” This candy-colored painting serves as its own kind of spatial partition, simultaneously three-dimensional and ethereal.

Le Mur s’en va (The wall goes away)
synthetic polymer on acrylic plastic
1969
Craig Kauffman
American, 1932–2010

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