Otto Freundlich — Composition (1932) | Abstract Composition in Navy, Red & White Fine Art Print

A fan of navy and near-black squares fills most of the canvas, opening into a fan of mid-blues at the centre; a cluster of white breaks through at the upper right beside a column of amber and ochre down the right edge, a wedge of red sits at the upper left, and a row of rust, brown and scarlet blocks gathers along the bottom. The drama is tonal rather than chromatic — Freundlich rarely let darkness dominate, and when he did the effect is architectural, like a cathedral interior. Painted in 1932.

Otto Freundlich (1878–1943) was one of the first European painters to commit fully to abstraction. Born in Pomerania, he settled in Paris in 1908 among the artists of the Bateau-Lavoir, worked on the restoration of the stained glass at Chartres Cathedral, and went on to build his mature paintings from interlocking fields of colour laid down like mosaic tesserae, later co-founding the Abstraction-Création group. In 1937 the Nazi regime singled out his work as 'degenerate', and he did not survive the war. His paintings were gathered by his companion Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss and donated to the Musée de Pontoise, and they have been steadily rediscovered ever since as a cornerstone of early abstraction.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.