Composition

Composition is composed of a compact but dynamic group of solid, geometric shapes that suggest a figure or structure. Its distinctive surface, covered with an application of small, flattened daubs of material, is reminiscent of sedimentary rock. Inviting the viewer’s active participation to circumnavigate the form, it weaves multiple perspectives into a whole, what Freundlich called "a community of forces."

The artist’s interest in abstraction was formed from his early involvement with Expressionism; his artmaking also intersected with the left-wing avant-garde ideas of Dada in Berlin, the Progressive Artists' Group in Cologne, and the Abstraction-Creation and Circle and Square groups in Paris. His art, made in both Germany and France, reflected his interest in social utopia: for him, the emergence of a new society required a new art. Political engagement was equally important. As a correspondent for various avant-garde journals, he published his pioneering thoughts on socially committed aesthetics.

In the late 1930s, the Nazis persecuted Freundlich as a leftist, Jewish artist; his work was deemed "degenerate" and included in the infamous 1937 exhibition, Degenerate "Art." In 1943, he was murdered at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland. Composition remained in his atelier as a monumental plaster until after World War II, when a group of supporters led by his widow, the artist Jeanne Kosnick-Kloss, joined together to realize the artist’s dreams of casting the work in bronze.