Composition 1923

Janos Mattis-Teutsch made this painting, Composition, with bright contrasting oil paints. The colours, particularly the pink, feel optimistic and full of life. I can imagine him wrestling with the image, pushing and pulling the shapes this way and that, in a dance of forms. There are so many shades of colours and tones, but then the deep green and black hold the composition firmly in place. The texture of the paint is lovely, not too thick but not thin either, so you can see the marks, and the movement and the hand of the artist. I'm sure that the colours that Mattis-Teutsch chose were not an accident. The shapes have an emotional quality, and the artist has arranged them in an expressionistic composition, much like Kandinsky. It is like the artist wants us to feel something that they cannot express in words. Painting is like that. It offers an embodied expression, but embraces ambiguity.