When Geometry Becomes Rhythm: Recreating Verena Loewensberg’s Concrete Art with p5.js

Exploring Swiss Concrete Art through creative coding — recreating Verena Loewensberg’s geometric composition using p5.js, interaction, and generative design.

Sometimes art doesn’t try to represent the world. It simply creates its own world.

This was my first thought when I came across the work of Swiss artist Verena Loewensberg. Her paintings do not depict landscapes, people, or objects. Instead, they explore something more fundamental color, geometry, rhythm, and balance.

And surprisingly, these same ideas translate beautifully into creative coding.

Glimpse of people interacting with the creative-coded artwork — Information Design Studio, NID Bengaluru.

This article explores how I recreated one of her works using p5.js, and what I learned from translating geometric art into interactive code.

Explore the final interactive version **here**

Discovering Verena Loewensberg

Verena Loewensberg was a key figure in the Zurich Concrete Art movement, a group of artists who believed that art should be built from pure visual elements rather than representations of reality.

Verena Loewensberg in her studio — a leading figure of the Zurich Concrete Art movement.

Instead of painting objects from the real world, Concrete artists focused on: Geometry, Color relationships, Spatial balance, Logical structure.

Loewensberg began producing concrete paintings in 1936 and continued exploring this visual language throughout her life.

Interestingly, she never liked giving titles to her paintings.

She believed titles could limit interpretation and influence how viewers perceive the work. Instead, she wanted the viewer to experience the composition directly.

Meaning should emerge from the visual experience itself.

This philosophy made her work feel open, curious, and exploratory.

A Different Kind of Geometry

While many Concrete artists pursued strict mathematical precision, Loewensberg’s paintings feel surprisingly playful and rhythmic.

Geometric compositions by Verena Loewensberg exploring color, rhythm, and spatial balance.

Her work often features:

• Bright colors
• Simple geometric shapes
• Asymmetrical arrangements
• Repeating visual patterns

Despite the structural logic behind them, the paintings rarely feel rigid. Instead, they feel almost musical — like shapes moving in rhythm across the canvas.

Her compositions create a delicate balance between structure and intuition.

The Artwork

The artwork I studied is an untitled painting from 1970–71.

At first glance, the composition appears extremely simple.

Untitled, Verena Loewensberg 1970 / 71

Four colored bands form L-shaped geometric frames that move diagonally toward the upper corner of the canvas.

The colors include: Blue, Yellow, Red, Purple

Each band sits slightly inside the previous one, creating a sequence of nested rectangular forms.

But what makes the composition interesting is the large white space at the center.

Rather than filling the canvas completely, Loewensberg allows empty space to become part of the composition. The colored frames activate the surrounding area, guiding the viewer’s eye around the painting.

The result is a structure that feels both stable and dynamic at the same time.

How the Painting Creates Rhythm

Although the painting is completely static, it generates a surprising sense of movement.

This rhythm comes from several visual decisions:

1. Repetition: The same rectangular band appears multiple times, creating visual consistency.

2. Sequential Color Progression: Each band introduces a new color, forming a rhythm similar to musical beats.

3. Spatial Offset: The shapes shift inward diagonally, producing a sense of directional movement.

4. Balanced Tension: The composition feels carefully balanced between filled and empty space.

Even though the painting is flat, these relationships create the illusion of spatial depth and visual motion.

Concrete Art in Action

This painting perfectly reflects the core ideas of Concrete Art.

The artwork does not represent anything from the real world. Instead, it exists purely through relationships between: Line, Color, Geometry, Space.

In this sense, the painting becomes a kind of visual system.

It invites the viewer to observe how simple elements interact and create harmony.

Recreating the Artwork with Code

To explore this composition further, I recreated the artwork using p5.js.

Instead of painting with brushes, the shapes were generated through code. This allowed the structure of the painting to be expressed through logic and parameters, which is very similar to how Concrete Art itself works.

I built three versions of the work.

1. Static Recreation

A direct reconstruction of the composition using geometric shapes — **Explore Here**

2. Interactive Version

In this version, the artwork responds to mouse movement along the X and Y axes — **Explore Here**

Interactive structure in progress (Left) and Fully constructed geometric rhythm (Right)

As the viewer interacts with the canvas, the shapes gradually complete the composition, revealing how the structure is built.

3. Animated Version

The final version introduces sound-based animation — Explore Here

Colorful overlapping rectangular frames forming a geometric square composition.

Here, music intensity influences the movement and formation of the shapes, transforming the static geometry into a dynamic visual rhythm.

What fascinated me most during this process was how naturally Concrete Art translates into code.

Both rely on similar principles: Systems, Rules, Repetition, Structure

Loewensberg’s paintings already feel like visual algorithms.

Using p5.js allowed me to treat shapes almost like modular components that could be positioned, repeated, and animated through logic.

It made me realize that creative coding and geometric art share the same DNA.

Verena Loewensberg’s work shows that art doesn’t always need complex imagery to feel expressive.

Sometimes a few colors, a few shapes, and careful balance are enough to create something powerful.

Recreating her work through code made me appreciate how geometry, rhythm, and interaction can transform simple structures into living visual systems.

And perhaps that is the beauty of both Concrete Art and creative coding.

They remind us that creativity can emerge from rules, logic, and structure just as much as from intuition.

This project was part of the Information Visualization II module taught by Rasagy Sharma, where we explored creative coding using p5.js.

We started by experimenting with simple shapes like:

• circles
• rectangles
• arcs
• curves

From there, we gradually learned how to create interactive and generative systems using concepts such as:

• the draw() loop
• conditions
• recursion
• drawing machines
• user interaction

These exercises showed how code can become a powerful medium for visual experimentation and artistic exploration.

Other Experiments

If you enjoyed this exploration of art and code, feel free to connect or explore more of my creative coding experiments.

Music Player (Left) and Self Reflective Portrait (Right)

1. Circle Composition — **Explore Here**
2. Self Reflective Portrait — **Explore Here**
3. Brush 01 (All Directions) — **Explore Here**
4. Brush 02 (Mouse-based Lines) — **Explore Here**
5. Music Player — **Explore Here**