Abe Ajay
American, 1919 - 1998Collage #6, 1995
Not on view
Hand-colored paper on paper
Dimensions19 × 8 in. (48.3 × 20.3 cm)
Gift of Betty Ajay, 2002.45
In 1978, seeking respite from fifteen years of construction, Ajay turned to the technique of colored paper collage, and for the next several years, he did little else. The two-dimensional exercise, he found, was "a good, quiet harbor to sail into. Deep, rich color, sit-down work, and no sawdust or noise, or junkyard excursions". He linked the medium to painting the variety of lightweight, hand-colored papers functioned as the brushstrokes. In terms of how they were actually fabricated, however, the collages were not that far removed from the constructions. They both were acts of building and layering.
