Figurengruppe unter lila-grünen Formen 1920

Adolf Hölzel made this drawing with coloured chalk, and the purple, green, and orange tones definitely give it a whimsical feeling. I can imagine Hölzel, bending over this piece of paper, layering color over color, hatching the chalk to build up form. How the simple gesture of a mark can accumulate, shift, and change the whole composition! I wonder if he stepped back to squint at it, turning it this way and that. The figures at the bottom are quite amorphous, just a jumble of red shapes nestled together. Is it a crowd? Or just a feeling of togetherness that he’s trying to capture? There’s something so immediate about chalk; you get right to the surface, and that's the end of the story. You can see how this drawing relates to other early 20th century abstraction by artists like Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter group, who also used color and form to express spiritual and emotional states. I think artists make work in conversation with each other, and we are lucky to be a part of it.