Still Life

Alfred Maurer

Oil on canvas

Barnes Foundation

A tabletop bursts with pattern in this bold Fauvist still life, where a blue-and-white porcelain jar, three green pears, and a swirling orange plate sit atop a richly patterned pink and navy cloth, all set against a wallpaper of stylized blue blossoms on golden ochre. Maurer, an American expatriate in Paris who absorbed the radical color theories of Matisse and the Fauves, abandons naturalistic shading in favor of flattened forms and clashing decorative patterns that vibrate against one another. The composition's dizzying interplay of textiles and ceramics reflects his fascination with turning everyday objects into fields of pure chromatic energy. This is an early, daring American response to European modernism, ideal for anyone drawn to the electric color harmonies of early twentieth-century avant-garde painting.