Basket of Flowers 1907

Leopoldine Kolbe’s ‘Basket of Flowers’ is a small paper collage. The flowers are yellow, purple, and crimson. The basket, a pale grid of vertical and horizontal bars. I wonder what Kolbe was thinking, snipping away at coloured papers, arranging them just so. Creating this little jewel, so modest and yet so ambitious. I imagine her carefully selecting each colour, each shape, intuitively piecing together a composition that feels both deliberate and spontaneous. It’s kind of like she's making a garden in her mind, a place where colours and shapes can bloom freely. Notice how each cut-out flower is different – a different colour or slightly skewed. This is what makes it sing. It's a reminder that art doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be real. All artwork is just a continuous conversation across time and place, an exchange of ideas. Like a basket of flowers, passed between friends.