Grey Still Life 1948

Adja Yunkers made this Grey Still Life print using black ink on paper. You know, it's funny when paintings are grey, it’s like they want to be color, but they’re not ready. I imagine Yunkers working on this print, inky hands pressing down, trying to capture the essence of the objects on the plate. Look at the way the forms are simplified, almost like pictograms. He's reducing things to their most basic shapes, like he’s trying to get to the heart of what it means to be a still life. There's a real push and pull between abstraction and representation here. It reminds me a bit of Morandi's bottles, but with a more graphic sensibility. You can feel the artist experimenting, figuring things out as he goes along. It's like he's saying, "Okay, what happens if I do this? And what if I do that?" That’s the real conversation of painting: what happens if...?