After a successful and multi-faceted early career in Zurich (including sculpture, performance, installation and photography), Swiss artist De Crignis turned to painting at the end of the 1970s. He moved to New York after a visit there in 1985. His experience of the Swiss tradition of geometric abstraction coupled with his exposure in New York to works of Minimal Art, Radical Painting, and Concrete Art (by artists like Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Ad Reinhardt, and Brice Marden) led him to paint increasingly abstract pictures about color, light, and space. He has produced ultramarine paintings since around 1992 with the goal of achieving pictorial depth by only painterly means. Since there is no single focal point, viewers must adjust their own physical position(s) of viewing according to their perception of the picture.
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In the artist's own words, with "this lively act of perception, the work becomes a picture-space." Moreover, the square format manages to refer both to the material world, its dimensions determined by the artist's own body, and to the more Platonic tradition harking back to Malevich.
