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| The Red Bowl, 1944 oil on celotex, 32 x 39 inches |
During WWII, artists began to have a difficult time finding canvas and would often use non-traditional surface for their creations. Around 1943-1944, Oskar Fischinger was able to acquire 20 pieces of celotex (a composition board).
In the excerpt below, William Moritz discusses The Red Bowl in his book, Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger
For about a year’s time, during 1943/ 1944, he painted all 20 celotexes simultaneously, strolling about the studio making a few lines here, a dash there, sponging an area, scraping a bit, painting over something, etc. What a sight they must have been in 1944 with nearly all complete!
The wonderful “Red Bowl”… consists of a dozen pure geometric forms on a brown background, each of the areas lightly brushed so that the texture of the Celotex shows through, and several of the shapes overlapping so that blue and yellow and cinnabar almost combine to recreate the brown of the background which they cover: while the forms balance each other harmonically as an absolute composition, Oskar’s playful arrangement leads one to speculate if triangles in the upper area might not be pyramids – indeed if one overlapped by a pointed oval might not be the “eye” on the pyramid familiar from Egyptian/ Alchemical/ Masonic mysticism…
For more information on The Red Bowl or other works in our exhibition Abstraction: Reshaping the Natural World, please contact us at info@saksgalleries.com or 303.333.4144.
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