Studio Note — 001
Max Jacobim has not used a brush since the age of seven months. His paintings are made with the hand — cold-pressed, warmed briefly against the palm, and driven into the canvas at a controlled thirty-degree twist.
The technique cannot be reproduced by tool or by any other living practitioner. Each work is signed at the lower right with the fingerprint that made it.
On the easel · Seventeen hours, one session · Right index finger only
Heart (Crimson, for a room)
2025 · Cadmium red, warmed to body temperature, on unprimed linen · 220 × 200 cm · Reserved.
Request the fileThe Discipline
A partial taxonomy.
The complete curriculum is not published. What appears here has been cleared by the studio for public reference.
Pressure control
Sustained load calibrated by pulse, not by scale.
Nail-edge scoring
The trailing edge of the nail as a secondary instrument.
Pigment temperature
Pigment is warmed in the palm to the temperature of a resting adult.
Rotational drag
A finger, entered at thirty degrees, twisted in a single unbroken motion.
Ceremonial preparation
The hand is prepared for eleven minutes before it is permitted to touch the surface.
Selected
Recent works
The Artist
The last living
practitioner.
Widely held to be the greatest living finger painter west of the Black Sea.
Jacobim was born in rural Pennsylvania in 1994 and, before his first birthday, was in Düsseldorf. He rejected the brush at seven months and has painted, since, only with the hand. The lineage of masters under whom he later studied in the Bernese Alps has, at their request, never been disclosed.
Read the biography →A Field of Hands
Hauser & Wirth, Zurich · 14 Feb — 4 May 2026
The Weight of Pigment
Gagosian, 24th Street, New York · Now on view
Nocturnes
Fondation Beyeler, Basel · 20 Sep 2025 — 11 Jan 2026
Jacobim: Hand to Ground
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo · Closed
Acquisition · By written introduction
Access to the work is not the same as ownership of it.
Both are handled privately, by the studio, by invitation.
Viewing room by appointment · Waitlist maintained · NDA available on request
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