Page 31 - Studio International - February 1966

has been preserved is seven-eighths sky. If one covers
the small strip at the bottom, one has the model for the
graduated monochromes which came fifteen years later.
In 1943 Geiger was made war artist to a staff in the
Ukraine. He took part in the great retreat. Next year,
still in the same capacity, he went to a relation, General
von Le Suire, in Corinth. It was the last stage of
apprenticeship. As often with a Northern artist in the
South, colour burst in his pictures like a broken fruit.
But unlike many he did not let it grow sweet. Then,
next to colour, light. His great experience here was
Ueberstrahlung, the phenomenon by which the con-
tours of objects become transparent. It remained in his
work in Germany, the forerunner of that luminous
pigment he would use—and shock with—ten years later.
Finally, the South returned him to his childhood.
'Cross Russia with Greece', as he said afterwards, 'and
you come back to Spain'.
The postwar years in Germany were very little fun for
anyone, but they were a creative time. To Geiger they
brought liberation in a double sense. He had been
medically discharged. As a civilian he escaped intern-
ment. But as an architect he would be unemployed
for years. For the first time he had nothing to do but
paint. He projected on to the landscape of his infancy all
this experience. The warm (Greek) and cold (Russian)

E 191 1952
Egg tempera
20 7/8 x 27 1/2 in.

OE 269 1957
Oil Seriagraph 1955
371 x 411 in. 29 1/8 x 24 5/8f in.