Michael Forster born India 1907-2002
Michael Forster is an artist with a unique and important place in the world of contemporary art that reaches beyond international borders. A frequent exhibitor with the major art societies already by the 1930’s with several of his paintings in the country’s major museum collections by the 1940’s, Forster was heavily influenced by celestial patterns in the space galaxies. Pre-dating the travels of the world’s astronauts, these works were inspired by the brilliant patterns found in space. Galvanized by the writings of the prominent German art historian Paul Wertheim Forster placed special emphasis on the supremacy of color in works such as in our Untitled work. Wertheim was once quoted as saying: Colour is the medium of his expression, he has reduced all that is visible, all that is imaginable to colour, a strange and fantastic world of visionary colour. By means of colour, he knows how to give form to a whole range of emotions and feelings. A proponent of early Surrealism Forster placed an emphasis on the unconscious life of the artist in his perceptive sensual application of paint. Forster’s further concern for the essence of paint itself led him to create mesmerizing surface textures that were deeply personal and filled with emotion. Relying intently on his intuition as an artist Forster once explained: I try to work in a state of open, receptive, mindlessness; to be alert to every hint, every direction that reveals itself in the course of the work” (MF, c. 1970)
