Still Life 1935

Konstantinos Parthenis made this mysterious still life with unknown materials at an unknown date, but its process feels close at hand. Look at how the objects are rendered: the pears, the bottle of wine, and even the glass seem to flicker on the canvas as if they’re not quite sure if they should be there or not. It feels like the ghost of Cubism. The colour palette is restricted to ochres, browns and the occasional flash of colour behind the bottle, which gives the work an overall subdued tone, but it’s punctuated by quick, sketchy lines, which reveal an expressive approach to mark making, and hint at the presence of the artist, their hand. These marks, layered and repeated, imply a sort of process, one that is both intuitive and deliberate, much like Giorgio Morandi, yet, the sketchiness, and ethereal quality, brings a unique flavour to his work. Parthenis’s still life invites us to contemplate the liminal space between representation and abstraction, object and idea.