An early pioneer of abstraction, Otto Freundlich (1878-1943) embarked on his Parisian career in 1908 at the Bateau-Lavoir, in Montmartre, where he met Picasso, Braque and Delaunay. He was a committed, visionary artist whose work was the vehicle for a powerful message. Forging a synthesis of the arts, philosophy and politics, he championed a reinvented humanity. Many of his works from the 1910s and 1920s were destroyed by the Nazi regime, which in 1937 attacked him as an example of what it called 'degenerate art'. Freundlich was deported and killed in 1943. This book shows how, through a profusion of creations and ideas, he played a groundbreaking role in the conception of abstract art.