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Oil on canvas. Signed lower right: “Hella Guth 49”. Hella Guth's art – which she created with remarkable perseverance and intensity, allowing her to create a valuable oeuvre despite the difficult conditions of exile – represented the inner unity of a world that ceased to exist and continued to splinter into fragments. However, this was not a solely negative development; the disintegration of the world also meant new discoveries and more general connections, which she always accommodated. Hella Guth was a member of the “lost generation” of the 1930s, strongly affected by the financial crisis, political radicalization and World War II. Due to her Jewish background, it wasn't just life and work that were difficult, but the very act of staying alive: her mother and younger sister, like the majority of her relatives and friends, perished in Nazi concentration camps and death camps. Although Hella Guth escaped the worst, she was profoundly marked by these events. Forced emigration to England was a transition to an entirely different culture, and her departure for Paris to work as an artist after the war represented a major change. In the end, success came in 1958 with her silver “Prix Suisse de Peinture Abstraite” and her work was purchased by major museums and galleries.