Composition (Round and Oval Forms)
This conversation is connected to Composition (Round and Oval Forms).
Overlapping round and oval forms in gray-violet are drawn over a field of warm color of coral red, orange, pink, blue, and patches of yellow. The forms are built from soft, layered pastel strokes, the edges smudged and blended, giving the whole composition a hazy, luminous quality. A small dark circle and a lighter oval near the upper right might suggest eyes, and the overall shape has a vaguely face-like quality, though nothing is explicit. Adolf Hölzel was a German painter born in Olmütz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic) who made one of the earliest known abstract paintings in Europe — Composition in Red, dated to 1905, four years before Kandinsky's first abstract work. Pastel on paper, initialed lower left, circa 1930.