In "Filmstudie", Hans Richter takes the concept of abstraction to a far greater level than in his previous work in the films of the "Rhythmus" series. All three films, which were likely just one film split into shorter sections when new material was consistently being added on, were focused mostly on simple abstraction in the form of cubism, an art movement that Richter was now transposing from painting to film. With a number of lines, rectangles and squares, Richter set out to create simple animation, lacking photographic value but purposefully doing so for the sake of simplicity. The results seem far too basic for most viewers, but this is what he was after by using standard shapes to show how less can be more.
However, in doing so the artist was also beginning to see himself as a filmmaker, and this short, "Filmstudie" (which I suppose means it's a study in film) shows a transition between Richter the cubist/expressionist and Richter the filmmaker. Both elements of photography and geometry are utilized in the four-minute film, starting off with images of floating heads and eyeballs, progressing into shapes and form, then ending again with the heads and eyes. With the combination of photography (the beginning and end) and the animation of the Rhythmus series (the middle) one can see Richter was starting to understand how he could create photographic abstraction as well as geometric abstraction using film. The final result is an interesting and well-crafted blend between the two, and it really does go to show how the German artist was becoming more of an independent filmmaker and less of a painter.
