Table 1935 - 1942

This study of a table, we don’t know when it was made or by whom, uses pencil and watercolour. Looking at the process, it feels like the artist is working something out, almost thinking aloud. There’s a contrast between the tabletop, rendered with a rich, almost syrupy watercolour, and the base, which is just sketched in outline. It’s like the artist is weighing up solidity versus lightness. The watercolour is translucent, letting the paper's texture peek through, adding a subtle graininess. The way the legs are drawn, they almost dissolve into the background, an erasure of form. The wood grain on the tabletop is lovingly depicted, giving it a tangible presence. It reminds me a little of Morandi’s paintings of bottles, simple forms rendered with a kind of devotional attention. The handwritten annotations around the image suggest a playful ambiguity, open to interpretation rather than a fixed, definitive statement.