In his masterpiece Central Park, painted in 1965, Pierre Alechinsky introduces for the first time what will become one of his identifying features: the margins. The painter surrounds the central subject with narrative motifs with a sort of predella that completes and explains it. These "marginal remarks", often in black and white, may also appear only in the lower register of the composition. 

Pierre ALECHINSKY
Central Park, 1965
Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas
with marginal notes in Indian ink 
162 x 193 cm
Collection of the artist

Et mon Bureau ? was painted between 1990 and 1993 in an expressive post-CoBrA spirit. It is composed of two distinct and joined canvases. An upper part where the composition is of a much larger size and a lower part where the marginal remarks take up fragments of the central image. 
By means of this "diptych", the artist creates a rather complex dialectic between the central subject, colored, abundant and the predella in black and white, cut and ordered in a series of images. These small sketches made with Indian ink complete the main subject and form an echo in negative, playing on the repetition and doubling of the image. 
As for the large composition, it seems more spontaneous, the pictorial gesture is exuberant and free, the acrylic palette is explosive and translates a strong energy. 

Pierre Alechinsky himself spoke about his creative process which, for Et mon Bureau ? took him three years: "Once the center is finished, I offer myself a respite, I let myself float, or I move on to other works; a hiatus that takes several days before I activate myself on the periphery, several weeks or months, in exceptional cases up to several years. No schedule, no obligation. In any case, I observe the center before launching myself into the margins."