Torschok 25.03.1864 - 15. März 1941 Wiesbaden

Meditation (April 1936 N. 7)

1936, Oil on linen-textured paper, mounted on cardboard

18 × 12,4 cm

Our "Meditation" from 1936 features a particularly attractive interplay of colours, because alongside the dark black colour bars of the implied face, warm, bright colours shimmer through in the intervening areas, illuminating the entire composition and lending it an almost magical, mystical tone. On the reverse, the artist stamps the meditation with the highest seal of quality 'I. A.', a mark of the highest quality, as the artist considers these works to be among the most important. The artist also dedicated and gifted it to his close friend and assistant in the studio, Lisa Kümmel.

Armin Zweite characterises the series of meditations created between 1934 and 1937 with sensitive observation as follows: 'Over hundreds of works, heavy bars in deep black vary the Greek cross, which rests on the horizontal mark of the mouth and is overlapped at the top by the brows bordering the forehead. The parallel brushstrokes give the areas in between a structure of their own. The transparent stripes overlap at the edges and often form narrow opaque zones of thickened colour, so that dark components and translucent areas merge into a Gestalt-like unity.