In the early 1970s, Argentinean conceptual artist Osvaldo Romberg (1938) began using a grid to analyze the tone and saturation of various colors.  His thorough taxonomies are vibrant, rainbow-like compositions whose optical effects exceed and deform the empirical structure of the grid with their uneven strokes of paint. Romberg’s deconstruction of both individual hues and those of famous historical paintings investigate the political and social conventions of looking and seeing. The works on paper from this period are infused with Romberg’s interest in art history, philosophy, linguistics, and informational systems.   

Romberg is currently Senior Curator at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. He is also a full time professor at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, where he a founded a center for experimental cinema, video and media art. He has exhibited widely as an artist at institutions including the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Sudo Museum, Tokyo; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Jewish Museum, New York; the XLI Venice Biennial, Israel Pavilion; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.