The non-figurative paintings of American artist Joseph Marioni, who was born in 1943 and has been living in New York since 1972, are built up of several layers of color. Although one color invariably dominates, it is his use of different tonalities that prevent a monochrome impression. His works concentrate purely on their inherent character and on the appearance and impact of color. "Private Icons" is Joseph Marioni's name for the paintings he keeps in his personal collection to document his own artistic development. Marioni has selected 22 of these works from the period 1980-1995 with the spatial and lighting conditions of the Baden-Baden Kunsthalle in mind. Alberto Giacometti's 1947 sculpture "Grande figure", with its materiality indicative of transcendental reality, sets a counterpoint to Marioni's paintings, which progress from the ephemerality of colour to the materiality of paint.