Composition III

Painted by Ragnhild Keyser at the height of her career in Paris, Composition II (1941.532.2) and Composition III exemplify the artist’s embrace of the Purist style pioneered by Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant and are among her most accomplished paintings. For each work, Keyser began with a sketch of several objects—a plaster torso, a bowl, and a chair, in the case of Composition II, and vases and a stack of books, for Composition III. She then flattened these shapes and solidified the intervals between them, eventually arriving at compositions that appear almost entirely abstract.