Relational Painting Tondo No.1

The work of Fritz Glarner is outstandingly represented at the Kunsthaus Zürich thanks to his widow Louise Glarner, who donated numerous paintings, drawings and documents. Together with the works of other Zurich Concretists such as Max Bill, they offer a comprehensive overview of the issues and visual problems that preoccupied the exponents of Concrete Art. This geometric, non-representational style of painting does not seek to reproduce the real, visible world. Rather, it attempts to balance abstract realities and the laws of mathematics and geometry within the canvas: the organization of the image, the relationships between the areas, the intensity of the base colours and grey tones are coordinated with the aim of creating in the painting a unity that is independent of the world yet internally functional. Fritz Glarner worked tirelessly to attain this harmony and balance in his Relational Paintings, as he called his compositions. His greatest achievement are the tondi, the round pictures in which he sets out to ‘square the circle’, the division into not quite orthogonal surfaces and stripes generating dynamism and tension.
Born in Zurich, Fritz Glarner lived for decades in the US, where he enjoyed a close friendship with Piet Mondrian, whom he had first met in Paris.