Still Life with Mask 1931

O. Louis Guglielmi created this still life with oil on canvas, though the precise date remains unknown. In this deceptively simple composition, Guglielmi presents a mask, plant, and chair, each laden with symbolic potential. Painted in the United States, the work evokes a sense of the theatrical, with the mask suggesting hidden identities and role-playing. The plant, stiff and upright, contrasts with the domestic wallpaper, and a fan, barely there. The cultural context of early 20th-century America, with its burgeoning entertainment industry and social stratification, may have influenced Guglielmi. Was he looking at immigration in America, the cultural theater of race and class? Historians interested in Guglielmi’s body of work, and the social structures of his day might look into popular theater, portraiture, or sociological texts. The meaning of this work, like any other, is contingent on its social and institutional context, which informs how we understand it today.