Alexandru Istrati (1915-1991) was a Franco-Romanian avantgarde painter and winner of the Prix Kandinsky in 1953. His work was characterised by the application of spots, blotches, or stains of colour to the canvas and was associated with Tachism. He exploited the raw physicality of the use of paint, turning his canvases into highly energetic sculptural objects, rather than mere two-dimensional representations. His work was exhibited at Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Dunkerque; Circle and Square Gallery, New York; Gres Gallery, Washington D.C; Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas; Galeria del Naviglio, Milan; Kunstverein, Cologne; Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid; Kunsthalle Zurich; San Francisco Museum; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.

Although Tachism was never a formally unified movement, it became an artistic term applied to several artists in the mid and second half of the twentieth century whose works were similar in their expression of intense emotions and universal themes. Artists who employed this approach did not start with an idea and then finish a painting, but simply began to paint, guided by instinct, letting gestures, expressive media, and subconscious feelings guide their work. It was only when their works were finished that they began to attach meaning to them. Istrati's painterly approach is particularly evident in the work Composition, whose main characteristic is its defiance of the tradition of naturalistic, figurative, and geometric canvases, as it embraces anti-compositional forms and the gestural techniques of spontaneity and irrationality.