“le Fini Défini Par Le Non Fini”

In 1965, in his studio in Warsaw, Opałka began painting a process of counting – from one to infinity. Starting in the top left-hand corner of the canvas and finishing in the bottom right-hand corner, the tiny numbers were painted in horizontal rows. Each new canvas, which the artist called a ‘detail’, took up counting where the last left off. Each ‘detail’ is the same size (196 x 135 cm), the dimension of his studio door in Warsaw. All details have the same title, “1965 / 1 – ∞”; the concept had no end, and the artist pledged his life to its execution: ‘All my work is a single thing, the description from number one to infinity. A single thing, a single life.’

The final number he wrote was 5,607,249

Via the internet via ftrain. Text from wikipedia. Image from the official website.

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