"I think for him [Meidner] Apocalypse is quite clearly, to be understood in terms of the cleansing.

"It's the way through to accessing the divine. I don't think it's about doom. I don't think there's fear. I think most of those paintings with their extraordinary diagonal star shapes rocketing across the surface of the picture – none of those are actually fearful. They are just accepting everything as blowing apart.

"He didn't put any figures in those. The only figures are sort of lifting their hands up or running like wild. But you wouldn't actually say that they show anything more than immediate shock. There's no tragic pathos, as he will dwell on later when he starts to focus on faces."