Michel Majerus

Michel Majerus fused Pop and Minimalism in large-scale paintings that pulsate with color, as well as images and text drawn from comic books and advertising. Sampling and appropriating from a wide array of pop cultural sources, Majerus’s references included the Super Mario brothers, Lara Croft, and General Electric. He gained notoriety in 1999 when he painted the entire façade of the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale with a pastiche of famous artworks. splash bombs 3 (2002) is a giant acrylic in which the artist incorporates the logo for the famous American water toy amid swaths of bold color. Majerus also combined painting with digital media and animated videos, including an accompaniment to a painting that consisted of a continuously changing video image of his signature, probing ideas of celebrity and authenticity. Majerus’s life and career were tragically cut short when the artist died in a plane crash in 2002.