The Thirty3cubed Pocket Art Collection

Adolf Hölzel’s Landscape with Figures (1925) comes from the later period of an artist considered an early pioneer of abstraction in Europe. Moving away from traditional representation, Hölzel transformed landscapes and figures into arrangements of shape, line, and color, allowing recognizable forms to shift in and out of abstraction.

Hölzel was fascinated by the relationship between color and music, approaching composition almost as a musician might approach rhythm and harmony. His ideas also reached far beyond his own work: as a professor at the Stuttgart Academy, he taught future Bauhaus artists Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer, helping influence the development of twentieth-century modernism.

Painted during the birth of Cubism, Still Life on a Table reflects the moment artists began breaking away from traditional perspective, reducing everyday objects into bold geometric forms. Rather than simply depicting a chair and table, Valmier invites us to see familiar objects from multiple viewpoints at once—an idea that forever changed the course of modern art.

This painting was created at nearly the same moment Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were developing Analytic Cubism in Paris. While Valmier would later become known for vibrant geometric abstraction, this early still life offers a rare glimpse into his transition from traditional painting to one of the defining visual languages of the twentieth century. 

"Bird Motif" by Thorolf Holmboe (Norwegian, 1866–1935) was a Norwegian painter, illustrator, and designer associated with the Art Nouveau movement. He is especially admired for his decorative interpretations of nature, often depicting birds, marine life, and Nordic landscapes with flowing lines and stylized forms.

Bird Motif reflects Holmboe's fascination with the natural world and his ability to transform a simple bird study into an elegant ornamental design. The composition combines graceful movement with bold patterning, characteristic of Scandinavian Art Nouveau at the turn of the twentieth century.

Anemones (ca. 1910–1912) reflects Henry Lyman Saÿen’s shift from scientific training into early American modernism, blending structural brushwork with a soft, atmospheric palette. Painted during his time in Paris, the work shows the influence of Post-Impressionism and Cézanne, translating a simple floral subject into a study of form, rhythm, and color rather than strict realism.

Robert Delaunay was a pioneer of Orphism, a style that focused on color and rhythm rather than realistic form, and he often explored how color alone could create movement and emotion.

In "Portrait De Madame Heim" he blends portraiture with abstraction—something many people don’t realize—so while it appears decorative and geometric at first, it’s actually a stylized representation of a real person rather than a purely abstract composition.