Quadrant I 1957

Jose de Almada-Negreiros made this geometry party in black and white, and you can almost see the brushstrokes dancing across the canvas. It's a study in contrasts, how dark pushes against light, how sharp lines can create a sense of movement. I bet Almada-Negreiros was really thinking about Mondrian or maybe even the Italian Futurists when he made this. There’s a crispness, an urgency that suggests an artist trying to capture the speed and dynamism of the modern world. Imagine the focus and the precision it must have taken to get those lines so clean, so exact. That single line slicing diagonally across the square, for example, it's like a lightning bolt, connecting everything. Painters are always talking to each other, even across time, and this piece is definitely part of that conversation. It’s a reminder that painting isn’t just about what you see, but about how you see, how you feel, and how you make sense of the world.