APPLE

Throughout Preller’s career as an artist, he was unconventional with his obsessive figurative expression compared to the modernist’s non-objective inclinations at the time. This was also the main source of criticism directed towards him especially later in his life. In 1963 Preller (Berman 2009:242-3) did comment on abstraction in art:

“I did realize after the mural that I had reached a psychological moment – that I would virtually have to start all over again…Now people can quite obviously say that I am deriving from the abstract painters of the day. And I am doing it quite deliberately; because while I was busy with the mural, three, four years had gone by, and I realized that the studios right around the world were being concerned with this idea of something that has nothing to do with figuration at all. With my African race I was concerned with very definite forms and figurations; and it occurred to me ‘why should I be painting like this when the whole world has suddenly destroyed all figuration?’ And I knew that a very exciting thing had happened – a wonderful thing had happened – that artists as a group had quite successfully destroyed the image! The musicians had tried it; the writers had tried it; but the painters in fact, had proved it could be done…and I am living side by side with what is happening.”/s

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