On My Non-Figurative Drawings on Photosensitized Paper and Acrylic Paintings

Abstract

I was born in Germany, in 1905, but lost my German citizenship through Hitler's Rassengesetz (racial law). From the age of 19, I spent most of my life in Paris. There from 1924 to 1939, working in diverse ways in photography, I came in contact with Torres Garcia (painter), Louis Fernandez (painter), Jacques Lipchitz (sculptor), Alberto Magnelli (painter), Francis Picabia (painter), Max Ernst (painter, sculptor), Julio Gonzalez (sculptor) and Lino Enea Spilimbergo (painter and graphic artist). Both Constructivism and Surrealism have strongly influenced my work. But my dominant interest was in exploring the use of light in photography to produce pictures that can range from the deepest black to the clearest of transparencies. These searches led me more and more into non-figurative compositions. In 1939 my photographic works were exhibited in Paris along with the sculpture of the German artist Moeller-Zorndt. At the beginning of World War II, I volunteered for military service in the French Army and was accepted in the French Foreign Legion. In 1942, after the fall of France, I escaped to Uruguay where I became a citizen and resumed my art work. In the years 1947-1951, I had major exhibitions in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro (at the Museum of Modern Art) and Lucerne (at the International Exhibition of Photography). I returned to Paris in 1951 and exhibited my photographs there for the last time in 1955. At that point I was convinced that photography was no longer a medium in which I could continue to develop my ideas, and I turned to a kind of graphics and later to painting.