Beppe Assenza was, at a young age, a successful Sicilian portrait painter. During the Second World War, he sought new forms of expression in painting and came closer to expressionism.
Inspired by Rudolf Steiner's work on the nature of colours, the exploration of colours became the focus of his painting.
He came to Switzerland, to Basel, and founded the Assenza Painting School in Dornach in 1968.
Assenza's sketchbooks are an important part of his work. They contain his methodological exploration of the colours as well as a large number of painting and compositional exercises.
He also explored the individual qualities of colour, the stages of their formal potential within the colour surface, and their gestural and linear forms of expression.