Otto Freundlich — Die Mutter (1921) | The Mother — Early Abstract Figure Fine Art Print

A tilted head with wide blue eyes sits at the hub of rays of yellow, cream, rose and red; below it, bands of teal, navy and black spiral round a rounded rose-pink body, and a raised hand closes at the right. Painted in 1921 (signed and dated at the lower left), while Freundlich was active in the Cologne Dada and Novembergruppe circles, it belongs to the short period when figure and abstraction still coexisted in his work. It is tender and monumental at once.

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.