Anton (née Anna) Prinner (1902-1983) was born in Budapest in 1902 and studied at the School of Fine Art in Budapest from 1920, before moving to Paris in 1927. After arriving in Paris, she created a male persona and was on good terms with Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Vieira da Silva, Jacques Prévert and Pierre Loeb. In Paris she studied at the free school of the Grande Chaumière and became influenced by Mondrian's neo-plasticism and Russian constructivism. By the early 1930s she was a prominent figure in the constructivist movement, and one of the earliest artists of Constructivist abstraction. From the late 1930s onwards Prinner turned her attention to figurative sculpture, print-making and ceramics, exhibiting at some of the leading galleries in Paris. Retrospectives of her work were held in 2006 in France and 2007 in Hungary and have re-established Prinner’s international reputation and international interest in her work.

This work, Sans titre, conceived in 1932, is typical of the Constructivist abstraction that Prinner was championing in the early 1930s. The colour palette shows the influence of Mondrian in the use of blue, yellow, red and black. In the work of Mondrian at this time, we have strictly horizontal or vertical lines with fields of colour interspersed. By contrast, Prinner has used triangular coloured fields to create a great sense of dynamism within the work – enhanced even further by the angles of the coloured planes on different sides of the work. Mondrian’s work uses white in contrast to the black and primary colours, whereas in Prinner’s sculpture we have the golden colour of the bronze as an equally effective contrast to the brightly coloured or black surfaces.