Fritz Winter's "Kaltes Rot” (Cold Red) from 1956 appears particularly harmonious in terms of form and color. The title says it all: although the color red is a hue associated with warmth, Winter's red moon radiates a certain coolness. This almost frosty appearance is supported by, on the one hand, the cool shades of gray, blue and black, and, on the other hand, the bold design. It seems as if Winter was evoking a three-dimensional night landscape here, opening up an intermediate space between figuration and abstraction. This interplay provided the basis for one of the most heated debates in German post-war art, the platform for which was the exhibition documenta I in Kassel, which was supposed to offer a look back at pre-war Modernism, which was to be revisited after the war and Nazi oppression. A work by Pablo Picasso, representative of pre-war Modernism, was prominently juxtaposed with a work by Fritz Winter as a contemporary response. Winter was one of the main representatives of the younger generation of German post-war artists, especially as he had completed his training before the beginning World War II, above all at the Bauhaus in Dessau, which stood for the German avant-garde like no other institution. He attended Wassily Kandinsky's course on the "Abstract Theory of Form", where Kandinsky expressed his ideas on "Isolated Form" and "Isolated Color", both principles that would shape Winter's subsequent artistic work. From the isolation of form and color at the Bauhaus, Winter was then led into his own isolation in the reality of National Socialism and war, attaining his own definition of form and color. While his art was defamed in 1937, and, like many of his contemporaries, he was banned from painting and exhibiting, he was drafted into the military in 1939. However, Winter was not deterred by these experiences and in 1949, the year of his release from Soviet captivity, he alongside Willi Baumeister and Rupprecht Geiger, and others, was a founding member of "ZEN 49". "Kaltes Rot" was created at a time that was so important both for Winter and for German post-war art as a whole, it is a prime example of what this new beginning had to look like. In three-dimensional spaces, forms and colors are suspended, opening up a new space in which the painting develops out of itself in harmonious color modulations. [AW]