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Concerning In the Water, I should like to mention its economy in design. It is constructed only with equally long horizontal and equally high ascending curves. This order permits the most simple stencil cut possible. (A stencil was necessary since the original glass painting was made in opaque flashed glass and executed with sandblasting only.) So the composition is appropriate to material and technique.

The design elements are strictly two-dimensional. All lines exist only mathematically, that is, not by themselves but only as boundaries between different color areas. Originally the three colors, white, black, and gray, were actually one color, namely, white and glossy and dulled black. All color areas are without modulation, therefore flat.

Despite the emphasized two-dimensionality of the design elements, the picture appears voluminous and spacial, and even transparent, though the colors are opaque. This is achieved through graduated distances between the horizontals, and through interpenetrations which function as overlappings. This results in heaping and accentuation within the groups of equally colored stripes. Thus the whole produces an illusion of plastic movement.

This painting is not representative, but abstract. However, it is not an abstraction derived from experience in nature. Its name was chosen — after the composition had been finished — because it reminds me of the movement of water plants. Therefore the name functions as distinction, not as topic.