Still Life 1926

Amedee Ozenfant made this still life, with what seems to be pencil and gouache, and, at first glance, it feels cool, very restrained. But look closer at the hatched marks filling the silhouettes of the bottles; it’s a very physical, lively process. See how the light doesn’t feel natural? It illuminates the objects evenly, so space and form are created through carefully placed flat planes of tone and subtle color shifts. Look at the lines on the vase. Are they gray, or are they cream? They hover ambiguously on the surface. The paint application is thin, and that underlying surface affects the overall tonality of the image, making it feel warm and immediate. Ozenfant, like Juan Gris, who also painted still lives, was exploring how to use a muted palette and a flattened picture plane to create tension. They both embraced an abstract, pared-down aesthetic, and proved that less can, indeed, be more.