VINSKÖRD 1924

Otto Gustav Carlsund made this painting of the harvest using oil paint, though we don't know exactly when. Looking at it, the colours are so precise and carefully placed, it's like he's building a world with blocks of colour. The painting is very flat, there's no real depth. Everything is laid out on the surface. There's an area to the left of the figure, where the blocks of colour are textured. It looks like the brushstrokes were deliberately rough and uneven to achieve that effect. This contrasts with the smoothness everywhere else and it's like a little rebellion against the neatness of everything. It puts me in mind of Léger, who was also making figurative paintings with a flattened, machine-like aesthetic at this time. But unlike Léger, who was interested in the dynamism of the modern world, this feels much more like a still life, with the figure posed in the centre. It's about looking and arranging more than movement. The colours are not quite as vibrant as Léger's either, there's a kind of muted, dreamlike quality to the work.