Composition with Green 

Aurel Cojan created this painting, Composition with Green, using oil paint on canvas. The artist's energetic brushstrokes activate the surface, and the white background, applied first, peeks through the layers of olive, chartreuse, and burgundy. The painting is full of movement and spontaneity, characteristic of Cojan’s work. The immediacy of the process is evident in the swirls and dashes of pigment, and the apparent speed of the marks demonstrates how the work was made in an instinctive, almost automatic way. This links Cojan to wider artistic trends within abstract expressionism, which values intuition, gesture, and improvisation. But it also brings the painting close to traditions of craft, where the direct engagement with materials and processes often takes precedence over pre-planned designs. In this painting, the very act of painting becomes the subject, revealing the social and cultural values of post-war artistic production. So as you look at the painting, consider how the choices of materials and making processes contribute to the overall effect, blurring the boundaries between high art and craft.