Table with Fruits in Balchik 1938

Vasile Popescu made this still life, *Table with Fruits in Balchik*, with a clear love for the physical stuff of paint. Look at how those brushstrokes linger, each one a little monument to the movement of his hand! You can almost feel him there in front of the canvas, nudging those browns and greens together, figuring out the specific angle of the plate. And those fuzzy, almost scribbled lines in the background? They suggest a space, but it's more like a feeling of a space, not some photographic record. I bet he was thinking about Cézanne, with his wonky tables and apples that seem ready to roll right off the canvas. It’s like Popescu is saying, "I'm not just showing you fruit; I'm showing you how I see fruit, how I feel about arranging things, how paint can make you feel something too." That’s the thing about painting, right? It's all about that conversation – artists riffing off each other, pushing and pulling at what painting can do.