The Forma series began with a single sketch that was meant to be nothing more than a note: two overlapping planes and a narrow slit of light between them. There was no plan for a cycle in it. Only when the same arrangement returned a few weeks later in a different proportion did it become clear that this was not a single work but a starting point.
The evolution of form in abstract art rarely looks like a straight line. It is closer to circling one problem: how much can be taken away before the composition falls apart, and how much added before it turns into decoration. Each new work is an answer to the previous one - sometimes an agreement, sometimes an objection.
Where the first form comes from
The first form is almost never the best one - it is the most necessary one. It works as a hypothesis: it assumes a certain arrangement of layers makes sense and allows that to be tested. This is why early versions are not discarded in the studio, even the visibly weaker ones. Without them there is nothing to measure the next ones against.
In practice it works like this: the same motif goes through a change of scale, a change in the proportion of the planes, a change in the density of texture and finally a change in what happens at the edge. Four variables, a dozen combinations - and out of that comes a series in which every piece stands alone, yet all of them speak with the same voice.
Variant, repetition, deviation
Repetition is not a lack of ideas in this process but a tool. When a motif returns for the fifth time, the eye stops reacting to novelty and starts seeing differences: a millimetre of shift, a different weight of grey, a different pace of the layer. That is the moment when form actually develops rather than merely changing its appearance.
The most interesting things, however, happen in the deviations - in the pieces that fall out of the series' rhythm. Usually they are the ones that mark the next stage. Forma no. 7 came into being as a framing error; today it is one of the works around which we built the further direction of the whole cycle.
When a form is finished
A form is finished not when nothing can be added, but when the next subtraction starts removing meaning. You recognise that moment by the fact that the work stops demanding attention and simply begins to be present in the space. If you want to see what this development looks like step by step, the whole Forma series is available in our abstract art gallery - the consecutive numbers are literally consecutive stages of the same thinking.
A form is not an idea you have. It is a question you carry through one painting after another.