Arthur Segal

The painter Arthur Segal, who was born in Romania and came from a family of Jewish bankers, moved to Berlin in 1892. In 1910 he joined the “Neue Secession” with its focus on Expressionism. His oeuvre was contemporary in character and had been influenced by Cubism and abstraction, with exhibitions of his works at Herwarth Walden's art gallery “Der Sturm”. During the First World War, in Switzerland, Segal came into contact with the Zürich Dadaists. After his return to Berlin, he joined the revolutionary “Novembergruppe”. Segal developed his own theory of visual art at an early stage, postulating the equal value of things, which he expressed in his paintings by giving equal treatment to all the depicted objects. One formal element that came to characterise his paintings was their grid structure. The subject – whether it was a landscape or a still life – always formed part of an additive geometric arrangement. Each painting was given a rhythmic compositional structure, colours were disassembled into prismatic components, and even the frame was integrated into the openly designed composition as a relief. In 1933 Segal and his family fled via Mallorca to England where, like in Berlin, he ran a private painting school, applying educational principles to disseminate his painterly insights.