Richard Paul Lohse, like his friend Max Bill, was interested in mathematical series and patterns and the discipline that is implied by a geometric non-figurative approach to painting. From 1943 onwards Lohse worked with horizontal and vertical bands of colour, influenced by the formal and chromatic experiments of Piet Mondrian, Theo Van Doesburg and Josef Albers. His aim was to create an anonymous, modular form of art, based on mathematical formulae. His paintings and screen prints combine mathematically precise abstract forms with colours that are similarly derived from formulae. Lohse believed that the ‘creative element in art is restricted to the choice of elements and the formulae of development from them, the rest depending on ingenuity and skill’.* *’Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art’, Entry for Richard Paul Lohse, 1988.