Otto Meyer-Amden

Vorbereitung, Teilkomposition, 1928

Otto Meyer-Amden worked almost exclusively on devotional pictures. Human affection and meditation are given concrete form in countless pencil, chalk, Indian ink, water-color and pen drawings, usually in small formats. It is art created from an inner, meaningful movement of the spirit that Meyer-Amden chooses as the motif for his creative work, alluding to it as both the purest and the sole picture subject, that “[…] through connective abundance, density, simplicity, with simplicity truth, with truth necessity, with necessity [becomes] style.” (O.M.) Meyer-Amden’s Vorbereitung, Teilkomposition, 1928, is one of over 20 partial versions of the same or related themes of ‘Refectory’ and ‘Devotion’ produced in the context of a commission for church windows, which were however not realized. His art could aptly be described as interest in the culture of a community combined with his ability to introduce formal distance.