Still-life on a Table of Horseshoe Form 1934

Vajda Lajos made this painting called "Still-life on a Table of Horseshoe Form" with some kind of gouache or tempera. The colors are muted and there is a ghostly atmosphere to the whole piece. I'm picturing him puzzling over how to render each object so they look flat and dimensional at the same time; like how he outlined the drapery but also added some tonal shifts that give it some shape. It reminds me a little bit of Giorgio Morandi's still-life paintings, where he's exploring similar formal concerns with shape, composition, and color. The painting seems to flatten out the object, which I think connects to synthetic cubism in some way. This all makes me think about what painting can do that other art forms can't. How the surface texture, color, and the artist's touch are all there at once, communicating feeling, intention, and meaning. It feels like he is having a conversation with us about the nature of painting itself.