Apollo 1923

Willi Baumeister made "Apollo" with a tight colour palette of browns, creams, blues and blacks which are laid down with a flat application, in geometric forms, that come together to make a fragmented whole. The material aspects here – the way the tones are close in value, the textures are smooth – create a solemn mood. It’s like looking at a broken statue, where the paint itself becomes the cracks and fissures. Take a look at the hand, raised in what could be a gesture of blessing or warning. The fingers are stiff, like a child’s drawing, yet the overall effect is strangely powerful. It’s as if Baumeister is reminding us that art doesn’t need to be perfect to be moving, in fact it can be more moving, as something broken. You could look at Kurt Schwitters, another German artist interested in the use of fragmentation, geometry, and a reduced palette to create a new vision for the possibilities of art. Art offers us a space where fixed definitions dissolve.