“Arthur Segal lived for his work, and he was not one of those who are content to tread the path of safety and success…Arthur Segal comes from Eastern Jewish stock. His people lived in Roumania, and he himself was born in Jassy (13th July, 1875). He lived and worked in many countries. The South of Switzerland (Ascona), where sometime between 1914 - 1917 he found his own expression was particularly important for his development…He was painter, sculptor and philosopher. He owned also the great gift as a teacher, who in his lifetime advised and assisted hundreds of students from most European countries and from America. His personality, radiant with enthusiasm for the work coupled with the sound principles of his impersonal method of teaching, brought help and encouragement to all of them” (Walter Segal, 1945, p. 2).

“I wish to be understood, accepted as a fact, and my efforts discerned from my causes. Whether my work pleases the one and not the other is of no consequence…The craving for appreciation is a misunderstood necessity to be understood. One should not be appreciated, but understood, and properly interpreted. Appreciation means valuation; understanding is not connected with valuation, but with casual affirmation, and therefore with equivalence. The longing to be affirmed corresponds to the necessity of the relation with the fellowman. It is the urge for community…Recognition and misjudgement are both equally tragic. I want to be understood without tragedy. I don’t want to be honoured and esteemed like Michelangelo, and not misjudged and overlooked like X. I want, as an individual, to be of equal value in the community” (Arthur Segal, 1927/28, p. 4).

“Until 1916 those who inspired my art were: Segantini, van Gogh, and lastly Matisse. The 1914 war threw me out of the traditional ways I had been used to. Art lost its halo. It ceased to fulfil what I expected from it and had hoped for. To-day I approach art with the same faith I brought to it before the first world war but in addition I have learnt to regard its mission and effect as an ethical factor in such a way as to banish forever the disappointment that overcame me then. In those days I was disappointed to see that art could not prevent war. I lost my close inner contact with it because I was no longer convinced of its ethical essentiality. But then, science too, seemed bankrupt to me, and I disavowed science as well. It is not surprising that I turned to abstract philosophy and religion and endeavoured to find a solution that way. I began to write. Painting was but a superficial habit. I painted because I enjoyed blending colours.

In 1916 my work took a new turn. I lived then in Ascona, near Locarno, at the Lago Maggiore. I painted in the expressionistic manner. I showed my picture to a colleague - it was a church with trees, sun-rays crept through the leaves and the whole landscape was enlivened by specks of sunlight. He found it well painted, but the composition bad for the reason that there were no dominant points. A good composition, so he said, must accentuate one or more places and overemphasize them and subordinate others, so that the eye of the spectator is at once led to the dominating point. That made me think. In my writings just then I was dealing with the question of the cause of conflict between people and nations, and I realised that the urge of the individual and the nations to dominate others, is the chief cause of conflict. I realised that nature does not make these differentiations, but gives the same attention to, let us say, a butterfly as she gives to a star. I realised that both butterfly and star are subjected to causality, and that causality does not recognise a difference between important and unimportant items. I realised that our scales of value are the result of our insufficiency to absorb and comprehend life. It became clear to me that our laws of composition in art - painting, sculpture, music, literature, etc. - correspond with our critical attitude to life, which either places above or subordinates.

From the moment this revelation came to me. art, i.e., painting, began once more to have a meaning for me. I realised that the desire for harmony and balance is inherent in art. Why must a good composition have a dominant point, so I thought. There are no dominating parts in nature, unless perhaps, if one regards only a sector. In nature everything is of equal importance and interest. That is how those pictures came into being which are divided into squares, and the frames of which are also painted. Every part was of equal importance. The eye of the spectator had to give the same attention to all parts, and the painted frame was meant to indicate that a picture is no limited section , but continues into infinite space.

Thus optical equivalence, or to coin a word, equi-balance was created, meant to be a symbol for the equality before the law in the realm of pictures.

Also belonging to the period of “equi-balance” are those of my pictures which are of a narrative description. They try to find a form of expression for literature. They are a protest against the existing opinion that the narrating literary element is not allowed in painting. For me nothing is impossible. The surface of the picture is divided into equal parts, each one of which takes up one episode of the tale. Connected with one another by graphic creation, the tale becomes a painted whole. This period of optical equi-balance was the first stage along my own path since 1916” (Arthur Segal, 1936/1943, pp. 4 - 6).

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