Plate with Fruits and Shellfish 1953

Max Gubler made this still life, “Plate with Fruits and Shellfish,” with oil on canvas using brushstrokes that feel both searching and confident. I imagine he started by mapping out the scene, then he just built up the paint in layers. There’s this dance between pink and orange in the shellfish, a kind of echo with the bowl of fruit. Did he lay down the fleshy pink of the shell first? Maybe he was thinking about Bonnard, or even Matisse, trying to figure out how to make these colors sing together. It feels like a puzzle he’s trying to solve right there on the canvas. See how the brushstrokes around the objects are loose and kind of messy? And how the table and the background feel like they’re almost breathing? It’s like the whole scene is alive, not just a bunch of objects sitting still. I think Gubler's asking us to look closely, to feel the weight of the fruit, to smell the sea on the shell, and to think about what we see.