Still life with a cup 1929 - 1930

Mikuláš Galanda made this still life with a cup, probably with gouache and ink on paper. Just imagine the artist standing here, brush in hand. The flat, orange form dominates; it’s like an abstracted, up-close view of something totally ordinary. I wonder what Galanda was thinking when he made this. The colour and composition give it a bold, graphic feel. You see these crisp, white lines delineating a cup, a square, and a cube, almost like a child's drawing, very reduced. It’s a bit like I feel when I'm trying to untangle an idea, but with a playfulness and openness to the unknown. I wonder if this relates to the wider trajectory of Galanda's work, and how he might have been inspired by other avant-garde painters of his time. Artists, we’re all just bouncing ideas off each other. So much of painting is about being open to possibilities, embracing the unresolved, the ambiguous. It's this openness that allows for so many different ways of seeing and feeling.