Grün-Rot 1939

Otto Freundlich made "Grün-Rot" with oil paint, constructing a landscape from tessellated brushstrokes. The greens and reds are laid down like tiles, carefully placed to build a rising, undulating rhythm. I imagine Freundlich standing before the canvas, maybe squinting a bit, tilting his head, deciding where each patch of color should go. The paint looks thick, doesn’t it? You can almost feel the drag of the brush across the surface. Look at the way the red shifts from a fiery orange to a deep brick – each stroke is a decision, a conversation between the artist and the painting. It’s not just about replicating the world, but about creating a new one, bit by bit. There's a push and pull, a kind of call and response. You know, like how we painters do, always trying to wrangle the chaos of color into some kind of harmony. It reminds me of Hilma af Klint and her quest to map out a spiritual world through abstraction. We artists are all in this conversation, trying to figure out how to make the invisible visible, aren't we?