BOTTROP.- Last Paintings. Ad Reinhardt is the first European exhibition of the American artist for more than 25 years. ‘In the Beginning is the End’ was for him at once a programmatic statement and equally a rejection of the traditional understanding of painting. With his so-called ‘black’ paintings which he himself describes as the ‘ultimate paintings that can be made’, he takes up an extreme position which has been a challenge to painting ever since. Painted with supreme skill, and extraordinarily subtle in the coloration, his paintings only reveal themselves gradually. What first looks like monochrome black appears when closely observed as a color spectrum of blue, red, yellow, and intermediate shades. Ad Reinhardt is one of the most mysterious figures in the art of the 20th century. The Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop is showing some 35 works that demonstrate the process by which his art m