Selected Paintings and Works on Paper
This selection introduces Friedrich Zettl’s painting through individual works. It ranges from spare calligraphic gestures to layered, colour-rich spaces in which landscape, figure and abstraction remain closely connected.
Chinese brushwork provides a foundation, while ink, pastel, oil and different papers bring distinct possibilities to the surface. A mark may remain clearly visible as a stroke or become part of a more ambiguous image.
The works are grouped under their existing year headings, from the current selection back to earlier paintings. Short texts draw attention to differences in composition, material and subject.
Links beneath individual works lead to the corresponding gallery entries. For the broader series and historical context, continue to the Art Portfolio.
Selected Works by Year
The year groups provide a route through the selection. A painting may also retain an earlier date in a gallery record when it has been revisited later.
Featured Artworks 2026
Meditation by the Sea
Meditation by the Sea was begun several years before Zettl returned to it in 2026. Oil glazes and smaller interventions changed the balance of its warm upper field, deep turquoise water and suspended black marks. The horizontal sea-like space provides continuity; the dark gestures introduce separate accents, pauses and changes of rhythm.
And Then It Ends
In And Then It Ends, two loose clusters emerge from a nearly black field. Pale veils, a yellow passage above and red marks below give the forms different densities. The work leaves their relationship unsettled, with just enough definition to suggest a presence.
The Empty Boat — 虚舟 (Xū Zhōu)
The Empty Boat — 虚舟 (Xū Zhōu) draws on Zhuangzi’s parable of the empty boat. A pale fish-like form hangs above blue water and a rocky shore, introducing an improbable observer into the landscape. The image gives a visual setting to Zettl’s reflection on ego and distance without turning the parable into a literal scene.
Mountains Swim, Fish Fly
Mountains Swim, Fish Fly gathers dark and pale fragments within a blue-green field. The title displaces familiar expectations, while the brushwork allows possible landscape and animal forms to appear and recede. Zettl connects this instability with changing social values and conventions.
Featured Artworks 2025
Oneiric Divide
Oneiric Divide is organised around a narrow dark vertical passage. Small red, brown and black forms interrupt the pale, finely textured surface, suggesting separate events within a shared space. An inscription and seals introduce another scale of marks.
Fractured Eden
Fractured Eden compresses green, ochre and black forms into a dense horizontal mass. Pale lines and abrupt breaks interrupt its apparent growth. The work approaches environmental fragility through a landscape-like structure that remains visibly assembled from overlapping marks.
Childhood
In Childhood, luminous, translucent shapes seem to drift within a deep dark field. Smaller fragments and circular forms surround the pale lower cluster. The image suggests memory through uncertain scale and incomplete recognition rather than a literal childhood scene.
Meditations on Absence
Meditations on Absence, from the Flickers of Being series, places small red, pale blue and ochre marks within an almost black field. Their separation makes the dark intervals active parts of the composition. Zettl’s reference to Anton Webern concerns this relationship between isolated events and the space around them.
The Mount of Olives
The Mount of Olives sets dark, gold and rust-coloured fragments within a pale pink and grey field. The marks gather and disperse without resolving into a continuous landscape. Its reference to Easter introduces themes of death and renewal while leaving their outcome open.
Featured Artworks 2024
Evening, then Night
In Evening, then Night, pale fragments hover within a textured green field. Some resemble small luminous bodies; others remain patches of colour. The work develops the uncertain space between landscape and dream found in Zettl’s New Surrealism paintings.
A Glimpse of Zen
A Glimpse of Zen, from the Zenimals series, brings a few angular black and grey gestures into an open vertical composition. Their placement can suggest an animal-like presence without fixing an anatomy. The framed view shows how much weight these sparse marks can carry.
Land and Sea
Land and Sea belongs to The Magic Sea project. A luminous yellow-green upper field gives way to a deep blue diagonal passage. Dark fragments interrupt the flow, making the boundary between land-like and water-like areas seem mobile.
Forces of Nature
Forces of Nature continues The Magic Sea project through a denser accumulation of green, yellow and dark strokes. Small openings and angled bands lead the eye through the surface. The sense of pressure comes from the crowding and direction of the forms.
Deep Blue Sea
Deep Blue Sea grew from Zettl’s experiences of snorkelling and diving in Egypt. Pink and turquoise forms gather within a deeper blue surround, with dark marks introducing another rhythm across the surface. The same work is listed in the artist’s gallery as Where the Deep Comes Alive.
Natural Forces
Natural Forces builds a compressed space from grey, brown and gold textures. A dark central mass is interrupted by pale strokes and small luminous areas. The work belongs to The Magic Sea project, approaching landscape through density and movement rather than a specific view.
Featured Artworks 2023
Flotsam
Flotsam began with material washed ashore during a visit to Egypt in 2023. Dark diagonal forms cross turquoise and sandy, granular passages. The resulting image preserves something of a coastal setting while allowing natural and discarded fragments to merge into abstraction.
Where Spheres Meet
Where Spheres Meet places broad dark arcs and smaller rust-coloured forms within a luminous blue field. Pale curved passages suggest openings or overlapping spaces. The framed view gives these different movements a contained, horizontal setting.
Firebird
Firebird responds to Stravinsky’s ballet through repeated changes of direction and weight. Red, ochre and brown strokes gather into two broad groups, with white paper separating them. The association with music rests in the rhythm of the gestures rather than an illustrated narrative.
Featured Artworks 2022
Blue and Brown
In Blue and Brown, broad turquoise marks sweep across and around a darker brown lower passage. Loops, drips and thin lines remain visible within the larger movement. The work belongs to the Gestural Abstraction selection.
The End of Time
The End of Time distributes brown and reddish forms across a largely white sheet. Thin dark marks connect or interrupt the broader strokes, while the open areas prevent them from becoming a single mass. Ink on Yupo contributes pooled edges and translucent transitions.
River Deep Mind High
River Deep Mind High brings ochre, turquoise, brown and black forms into a layered blue-green space. The marks seem to rise and turn within it, leaving several possible depths in play. The gallery lists this work under the title Deep Current.
Corona and Ice (II)
In Corona and Ice (II), brilliant blue vertical passages are crossed by dark fragmented forms. Pale, textured areas suggest stillness, while the heavier black marks interrupt the downward flow. The contrast between them organises the composition.
Featured Artworks 2021
Elongated Landscape
Elongated Landscape extends a dense cluster of colour and dark marks across a white horizontal field. A taller central formation anchors the composition, while smaller strokes lead outwards. The landscape association remains open rather than tied to a continuous horizon.
Music and Power
Music and Power, from the Zen Moments series, sets heavy brown forms beneath a curtain of turquoise drips. Dark strokes and pale areas pull in different directions. Repeated marks and shifts of visual weight give the painting its concentrated rhythm.
Over the Mountains
Over the Mountains turns green, blue and ochre strokes into an open landscape-like structure. Long dark gestures pass through broader coloured forms. The work later appeared in a bilingual volume of Theodor Storm’s poems, for which Zettl also designed the cover.
Featured Artworks 2020
Poem in Red
Poem in Red begins with repeated writing of a poem by Tang Yin. The red script accumulates into a dense field, with irregular white gaps retaining a sense of the separate strokes. It belongs to Painted Calligraphy, where repetition turns language into image.
Spring
Spring also develops from the repeated inscription of a Chinese poem. Green, yellow and darker characters overlap into a luminous field. Changes of density allow the writing to remain partly distinguishable within the broader colour structure.
Down by the Sea
Down by the Sea sets small, partly recognisable forms within a fluid blue-green field. Dark vertical gestures and pale passages suggest different depths without fixing a single viewpoint. Ink on Yupo keeps the transitions between these forms unusually mobile.
Selected Works Before 2020
Sunset in the Woods
Sunset in the Woods was inspired by the Vienna Woods and Zettl’s renewed interest in the colour of the Blue Rider painters. Tall blue and green bands are punctuated by orange light. The forest becomes a rhythm of vertical forms rather than a closely described view.
Fetish (I)
Fetish (I) brings two broad groups of black and reddish-brown brushwork into a vertical composition. Short curves and layered bands remain visible within the dark forms. The unpainted intervals preserve the distinct movement of each group.
Power Play
In Power Play, red and black strokes form an angular structure across white paper. Thin lines, splashes and broader bands overlap without fully closing the centre. The work can be followed as a sequence of calligraphic movements as well as an abstract composition.
Withered Hibiscus Flowers
Withered Hibiscus Flowers gathers pale rose-brown washes and darker broken marks into a loose vertical structure. Drips and open areas interrupt the broadest forms. The subject remains suggested through the fragile, uneven handling of the surface.
Gallery Information
The individual gallery links provide further images and catalogue information where a matching entry has been checked.
Explore More
The Art Portfolio follows the broader series. The Asian Art Essays and journal develop the ideas and observations behind the work.
Related articles: Art Portfolio | Gestural Abstraction | Painted Calligraphy
Explore Art & Writing
Art Portfolio → Featured Artworks → Arts & Philosophy Journal → All Articles
Explore Asian Art Essays for writing on Chinese painting, calligraphy, aesthetics and art history.
Available Artworks
Original works are available on FriedrichZettl.com and Saatchi Art
Comments
2 responses to “Featured Artworks”
It was not announced. I check your site every day.
🤣