October 2001
Geometrical Affairs
New acquisitions and works from the collection
Sylvie Fleury
John Armleder
Josef Albers
Gottfried HoneggerGail Haistings
Karin Sander
Camille Graeser
Camille Graeser
1892-1980/CHHarmonikale Konstruktion,
1951 Oil and tempera on canvas, 40 x 75 cmCamille Graeser's Harmonikale Konstruktion is based on splitting the canvas into 120 squares. Some of these squares are coloured to bring them forward, and then linked like stripes. On the left is an open, on the left a closed formal complex, and between them a purple stripe act as the mediating vertical pictorial axis. At the same time, Graeser stresses the effect of the colour, which appeals to the viewer's "musical" sensibility as a "painterly sound".
This painting is an attempt to develop a mobile surface as well as a spatial interplay of connections from a bipolar geometrical arrangement. The picture is one of the groups of works called "Loxodromische Komposition" (1947-55), whose theme is the diagonal shift.