Four decades of drawings

‘There was a time when I was uncomfortable with the cracks, gaps and pitfalls in my work. [...] A retrospective vision allows [me] to come to terms with history with some enthusiasm.’ In 2006, Peter Friedl reviewed his portfolios of sketches and discarded material, and decided to show them in public for the first time. He compiled a long series of drawings: the first was from September 1964, when he was 4 years old; and the last from August 2005, four decades later. Although the overall vision shows how his visual universe has been built – with the use of some colours and not others, and with recurring images and icons –, the artist's gesture of recovery reaches beyond his own biography: he shifts his gaze towards the discarded material and the binding value of each and every day.