Transit

Joan Balzar’s paintings are well known for their hard-edged style, an aesthetic which dominated her practice from the early 60s onwards. The development of the Soviet and American space programs and, in particular, the Apollo moon landing in 1969, had a significant impact on Balzar’s use of arcs and lines. “My arcs and lines are fragments of a larger whole extending into a greater, lighter space,” she stated. Balzar was keenly interested in “creating light” within the paint itself for which she would apply multiple undercoats, each were sanded smooth, to achieve two effects, “the light force of neon and the light volume in paint.”