Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Father)

Rosemarie Trockel's oeuvre encompasses a broad range of media and styles, but each piece focuses on a specific detail or theme that is carefully elaborated. The subjects range from hybrid fairy-tale creatures to portraits of friends and family. In this portrait, Trockel finger-painted an image of her uncommunicative father. She was inspired by Freudian therapy, which encourages patients to draw images of family members as a way of releasing hidden emotions. Trockel recalled that the making of this drawing was "pure emotion" and part of an organic process in which all parts were created intuitively.