Artist · 23 prints
Otto Freundlich
About Otto Freundlich
Otto Freundlich was a German painter and sculptor, born on 10 July 1878 in Stolp, Pomerania, now Słupsk in Poland. He first trained in dentistry, then studied art history, before turning to art himself. In 1908 he moved to Paris and lived at the Bateau-Lavoir, the Montmartre studio building shared by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He helped organise the first Dada exhibition in Cologne in 1919 and settled in France again in the mid-1920s, where he joined the abstract group Abstraction-Création.
Freundlich was one of the early believers in abstract art, building pictures from fields of colour fitted together like pieces of a mosaic, as in his Composition of 1911 and My Red Heaven of 1932. In 1937 the Nazis seized his large sculpted head and used it on the cover of the guide to their Degenerate Art exhibition, which mocked modern art. Otto Freundlich was Jewish. He was arrested in France in February 1943, deported to occupied Poland and murdered in a Nazi camp there the following month.
Otto Freundlich prints: reproductions of abstract paintings by the German artist Otto Freundlich, made between 1921 and 1939. The collection includes Lichtkreise (Kosmischer Regenbogen) (1922), Komposition in Blau (1931), My Sky is Red (1933), Komposition (1936) and Komposition (1939).
This selection concentrates on Freundlich's mosaic-like compositions of the 1930s, built from interlocking blocks of colour in reds, pinks, navy, yellow and blue. It also includes earlier works from the 1920s, such as Die Mutter (1921) and two Compositions of 1924 with rainbow bands and an abstract figure. The works show how he moved from figures toward pure colour fields.
The strong colour blocks suit living rooms, home offices and modern dining rooms, and the paler compositions work well in bedrooms and hallways. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
