Abstracting symbolic forms dominate Ritschl's paintings of the post-war period. From 1954 on, the forms, which until then had still drawn their expression from the softly moving interplay with the freely moving line, deepen. Geometric vocabulary leads to a stricter organization of the composition, while at the same time Ritschl refrains from painterly factures and color nuances. The artist thus stands as a counterpart of the contemporaneous Tachists in the vicinity of the French Constructivists, with whom he also exhibits.
Due to the death of his wife in 1958, the formal accents of Ritschl's art changed. Thus, the colors break away from their strict order and float in island-like, generous panes in front of a tinted ground. Around 1960, the colors became an independent element of monochrome meditation pictures, in order to visualize the forces and energies at work. The essential pictorial element remains the diffusely blurring outline of the color fields. Ritschl's abstractions never refer to concrete things, but to areas of the soul.