Geometric Composition (The Angles of Olle Bærtling) 1968

Olle Baertling made Geometric Composition with flat colour in the sixties, but it feels so now. I can picture him, ruler in hand, carefully drawing out his lines, filling in the shapes. Each colour feels chosen with such precision, the cool mint meeting the assertive purple. It’s a composition of powerful simplicity. I'm thinking about how artists like Baertling were trying to distill painting down to its purest form. He’s working through how to make a painting without any recognizable subject matter. Looking at how he uses geometric shapes and vibrant colours reminds me of some of the conversations happening in art right now; Sol Lewitt and Hilma af Klint come to mind. We keep returning to these basic forms, to the language of colour and line, to find new ways of seeing and feeling. It’s like we're always in dialogue with the artists who came before, building on their ideas, pushing them further.