In the 1930s and 1940s he went through phases influenced by Expressionism and Surrealism, but from about 1947 he began to develop his mature and distinctive style. Typically his paintings feature large rectangular expanses of colour arranged parallel to each other, usually in a vertical format. The edges of these shapes are softly uneven, giving them a hazy, pulsating quality, and they seem to gently hover or float over the canvas. His paintings are often very large and the effect they produce is one of calmness and contemplation, but in spite of their tranquility, they cost him enormous emotional effort: �I'm not an abstract artist � I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions�tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate these basic human emotions � The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience as I had when I painted them.�
