Grey Still Life 1948

Adja Yunkers made this color woodcut, called ‘Grey Still Life’, sometime in the mid twentieth century. It’s full of these earthy browns and blues, like a storm cloud rolling over a ploughed field. You can almost feel the grain of the wood in the print, each mark has a life of its own. Look at the shapes in the upper half; they sit on top of each other in such a way that you can almost see them moving, like a collage you might rearrange over and over again. You can see the process; it's not trying to hide. And then there’s that horizontal band of blue lines at the bottom, like a table edge, or maybe it's something in the landscape? Is it still life, or is it a landscape? It’s both at once! I’m reminded of someone like Milton Avery, who was also blurring the line between abstraction and figuration. It’s like they're both asking, "what do we really mean when we say 'still life'?".