still life with frying pan nicolas de stael

still life with frying pan nicolas de staelIn this still life, Nicolas de Stal continues his work on everyday objects treated as autonomous forms. At this stage in his career, he no longer seeks to faithfully describe the elements represented, but rather to construct the image through relationships between volumes, colours and materials. Kitchen utensils thus become a pretext for a stable pictorial organisation, stripped of any narrative context. The composition is dominated by a uniform mauve

The result is a landscape that

typical of Orphic Cubism

with touches of light filtering through the foliage and illuminating the leaves and plants on the ground

A rounded red area appears below

The dominant colours are soft

Yet reduced to a subordinate performing his last tasks

and Van Gogh's Night Café

The tree trunks are slanted and line the scene on both sides

depicts the garden of Claude Monet's second home in Argenteuil

Far from the original print

The richly textured brushstrokes create a fascinating depth

The colourful boats