Cubist still life 1915

Zygmunt Waliszewski made this Cubist still life, probably in the early 20th century, with watercolor and pencil. It's all about how he teases out a limited palette to describe different kinds of objects. I love the way he lets the watercolor do its thing, thin and transparent in some areas, layered and a bit muddy in others. Look at the stacked forms in the lower part of the painting, maybe they're books, maybe they're just geometric shapes. The way he lets the colors bleed into each other, especially on the edges, gives them a kind of hazy, dreamlike quality. It's like he's more interested in the idea of these things than in their actual appearance. It’s this negotiation between abstraction and representation that I find so appealing. Waliszewski reminds me a bit of Juan Gris, in the way he breaks down objects into geometric forms and then reassembles them in unexpected ways. But while Gris is all about precision and control, Waliszewski seems more interested in the accidents and surprises that happen along the way. For me, it’s the looseness that makes this still life so alive.