Grey Still Life 1948

Adja Yunkers made this grey still life sometime in the 20th century, and it's got that great abstract expressionist energy, right? I love how the composition is both there, like you can see the fruit bowl and the fruit, but also not there, because the forms are so smudged and broken up. Look at that thick grey paint, almost like plaster, built up in layers, then scraped back to reveal the colours underneath. You can see the history of the painting, the way the artist worked and reworked the surface. And it’s not just grey; there are pops of blue, green, and yellow that give the painting a kind of melancholic vibrancy. I love the way the white lines cut through the composition. Are they knives, light, or some kind of erasure? It reminds me a little of Kurt Schwitters, that same sense of collage and found objects, but here it's all paint, all surface, all Yunkers. These artists seem to be constantly asking, "what can a painting be?".