Anja Decker (1908–1995) Abstract Composition, German Art Informel, Circa 1950-60

Anja Decker (1908–1995) – Black and White Abstract Composition, German Art Informel, circa 1950–1965

Ink and tempera on paper
German School, circa 1950–1965
29 x 20 cm (artwork)
63 x 53 cm (frame)
Exhibited at the Kunsthalle Emden in 2024 as part of the exhibition “Bilder wie Energiemaschinen. Otto van de Loo zum Hundertsten”


Presented under passe-partout and in a modern wooden frame.

Anja Decker belongs to the first generations of artists involved in the emergence of German Abstract Informel, at a time when this visual language was still being invented. This work belongs to the most liberated phase of her artistic development, when gesture, mark and material became the essential elements of composition.

Executed in ink and tempera, the composition is built from a network of black forms, circular marks and luminous reserves that animate the entire surface of the paper. Certain shapes evoke organisms, silhouettes or fleeting presences, without ever settling into a fixed representation.

The bold black strokes that structure the composition recall the interest many Informel artists developed in Eastern calligraphy and in the expressive power of the gesture itself. Here, the mark no longer describes; it becomes the subject of the work, carrying rhythm, movement and energy.

Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Olaf Gulbransson (1873–1958), Anja Decker developed a highly personal abstract language after the Second World War. Her work shares common roots with the experimental climate that gave rise to European Art Informel, the legacy of COBRA, the investigations of the SPUR group in Munich and the new postwar avant-garde movements.

This work was exhibited at the Kunsthalle Emden in the exhibition “Bilder wie Energiemaschinen. Otto van de Loo zum Hundertsten”, dedicated to the centenary of Otto van de Loo, the influential gallerist, collector and promoter of postwar European abstraction. Several works by Anja Decker were brought together for this exhibition, confirming the renewed interest in an artist who remains little known to the wider public yet occupies a meaningful place in the history of German abstraction.