Composition (1924): Art, History and Details

Composition (1924) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Otto Freundlich (German, 1878–1943).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

After studying art in Germany and Italy, Freundlich visited Paris for the first time in 1908, and worked alongside avant-garde writers and artists such as Apollinaire, Braque, and Picasso in the bohemian district of Montmartre. Freundlich painted his first purely abstract works in 1911 and henceforth became committed to pioneering abstraction. His work was included in groundbreaking exhibitions before and after World War I in Berlin, Munich, and Paris. Some of his most lyrically intense pastels—such as Composition—were made in 1924 following a trip to Paris when he participated in the Salon des Indépendants.

Object facts

• Title: Composition
• Date: 1924
• Creator attribution: Otto Freundlich (German, 1878–1943)
• Culture: Germany, 20th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pastel
• Dimensions: Overall: 74.6 x 53.8 cm (29 3/8 x 21 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - German
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1992.277

Collection credit

Bequest of Lockwood Thompson

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• "Art Together Family Workshops.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 6 (November/December 2016): 41.
• Coffin, Sarah D., and Stephen Harrison. The Jazz Age: American style in the 1920s. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2017.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.