Roman Opałka

Born in 1931 in Abbeville, France, to Polish parents repatriated after the war, he studied at the School of Art and Design in Łódź and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1965 he began the project 1965/1–∞: painting consecutive integers from one toward infinity across canvases of identical dimensions — 196 by 135 centimetres, the size of his Warsaw studio door — using white paint on a progressively lightening grey ground, adding one percent more white with each canvas. He also photographed himself before each completed surface and recorded himself speaking every number aloud. By 2004 he had reached 5.5 million. He died in 2011.