Winter

Heinz Trokes

In 1947 Heinz Trokes was living in Berlin, helping with the effort to rebuild an artist community after the Second World War. Between 1945 and 1948 his style took on the mathematical, kinetic influence of Wassily Kandinsky, who he’d met just before the onset of war, and he created a series of “cosmonautical” images that restructured everyday landscapes and objects into sharp, geometric formations. Trokes was likely inspired by his time as a textile designer and his work in stained glass, as well.

In “Winter,” drawn during this period of experimentation, a fractal object is drawn with a delicate angularity, suggesting the precarious structure of snowflakes, strong in concept but still fragile when viewed from the human perspective.