Beginning in the late 40s under the tutelage of Hans Hofmann, Müller maintained primarily formal concerns. His early mosaic paintings from this period emphasized a strong focus on color and geometric from. This work, shown both at the Guggenheim and MoMA, shows the influence of his teacher Hans Hofmann in terms of color blocking, but also presaging Ellsworth Kelly’s mosaic works, albeit in a looser and more painterly way. The work is plainly titled and crafted with reference to perhaps the essential form of early Western art. So it is interesting to find the poet John Ashbery noting that Müller “brings a medieval sensibility to neo-Expressionist paintings.”
