Abstract Composition

In 1933, when this canvas was painted, Lajos Tihanyi had lived in Paris for nearly ten years and belonged to Abstraction-Création, an association of abstract artists of many nationalities founded there in 1931. Nothing in the picture is a recognisable object. A pale green form, pointed at the top and sweeping outward, cuts across rounded orange shapes and a small black disc. Behind them stands a panel of vertical blue and red stripes speckled with dots, and the whole group floats on a deep black ground. The painter's initials, LT, sit at the lower right. The canvas comes from the collection of Carl Laszlo, who was born in Pécs in southern Hungary in 1923, survived deportation to Auschwitz and settled in Basel after the war as a psychoanalyst and art collector. Since 2020 it has been on permanent loan to the Belvedere.