Judit Reigl arrived in France in 1950, following a harrowing escape from her native Hungary in the wake of its absorption into the Soviet Bloc. She was drawn to the circle of the Surrealists, whose work was characterized by automatism and the dreamlike imagery championed by André Breton. Four years later in Paris, Breton organized Reigl’s first solo show of quasi-figurative paintings. Although she distanced herself from Breton soon afterwards, Reigl maintained an interest in the automatic writing methods associated with the Surrealists. In the 1950s and 1960s she worked on a series of paintings where she worked with sponges saturated with undiluted China ink that she applied directly to paper laid out on her studio floor. While her approach shares qualities with the action paintings of the Abstract Expressionists in New York, her work comes more directly from the automatic impulses linked to Surrealism. Between 1958 and 1965 she often reused what she deemed to be failed canvases, throwing them on the floor, walking and pouring paint on them, leaving room for accidents and objective chance.
One of Reigl’s key series is “Mass Writing,” executed between 1959–1965, in which she used black, pitch-like material sold in bulk at building supply stores. Working simultaneously on several large canvases, she manipulated the medium with her spatulas and trowels, allowing it to set partially, then scraping, carving, and finishing the works in a single session. Reigl has said that her practice, which involves an uninterrupted sequence of actions, is based on the unconscious. She has explained, “I work with my entire body, to my full arms’ reach.”