Art Talk #43 – Geometry, Color, and Meaning

When we talk about Bauhaus or Suprematism, most people imagine sharp shapes and bold colors: squares, circles, triangles floating on white or black grounds. But there’s a lesser-known thread that ties these two movements together: an obsession with silence.

Kazimir Malevich described his “Black Square” not as a painting but as a “zero point of art.” To him, it was a void — a surface emptied of story and narrative. Silence in paint. In Germany, Bauhaus teachers like Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy were also searching for something similar, though in a different key. Their experiments with grids, colors, and proportions weren’t just about design efficiency. They were ways of tuning vision, making viewers pause, and finding calm in clarity.

This hidden pursuit of silence feels surprisingly urgent today. We live in a world that hums with constant notifications, endless scrolling, and visual noise. Hanging a piece of geometric art — a circle floating on black, a rhythm of colored bars, a balance of lines — can feel like reclaiming a little order. These works don’t shout; they hold space.

At Olshbau, we often explore this idea. Our sculptures use pared-down shapes and vivid but restrained colors, aiming to create presence without overwhelm. They are not decorations in the conventional sense, but atmospheres — visual pauses in the rhythm of a room.

As John Cage famously wrote:

“Silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.” – John Cage, Silence (1961)

Geometry, then, is not only about mathematics or style. It becomes a way of shaping silence — of inviting balance, clarity, and meaning into everyday life.