Light in European culture has always been seen as sublime in religious and metaphysical terms. The biblical story of Genesis even starts with the creation of light. At the same time light has always been understood as the precondition of knowledge, not least in the era of the Enlightenment, being the central metaphor for spiritual illumination through reason. And thus illuminated stained glass windows have been regarded since the early Middle Ages as a suitable medium for expressing these perceptions in material and artistic form, capable of combining architectural requirements with spiritual content in cathedrals, churches, synagogues,
“Painting is a thundering conflict of different worlds, which in and out of the battle with one another are intended to create the new world, which is called the world of art”, wrote Vassily Kandinsky on the process of painting in a famous and often cited text from 1913. He continued: “Each work arises technically in a way similar to that in which the cosmos arose – through catastrophes, which from the chaotic roaring of the instruments finally create a symphony, the music of the spheres. The creation of the work is the creation of worlds.” Kandinsky