Still Life (Curved Oval)

The ‘very refined’ oeuvre of Ben Nicholson, as critics often described it, is indebted to the synthetic Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Nicholson reminisced in 1944:‘I remember suddenly coming on a Cubist Picasso at the end of a small upstairs room in Paul Rosenberg's gallery... it was what seemed to me then completely abstract and in the center…

The ‘very refined’ oeuvre of Ben Nicholson, as critics often described it, is indebted to the synthetic Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Nicholson reminisced in 1944:‘I remember suddenly coming on a Cubist Picasso at the end of a small upstairs room in Paul Rosenberg's gallery... it was what seemed to me then completely abstract and in the center there was an absolutely miraculous green - very deep, very potent, and absolutely real – in fact none of the events in one's life have been more real than that and it still remains the standard by which I judge any reality in my work’, Still Life (Curved Oval) is not so much the depiction of a still life in changing perspectives – a table seen from above with jugs and bottles seen from the side – but the creation of overlapping structures of lines and planes in a delicate balance. The fairly neutral, restrained areas of colour break every illusion of depth. They contrast with the refined drawn lines depicting the outlines of recognisable forms. The interaction of the bent, organic and straight geometrical lines can refer to the inspiration that Nicholson drew from the calligraphic play of lines by the Surrealist Joan Miró and the distinctive grid lines of the abstract Symbolist Piet Mondrian, whom he first met in Paris in 1933. Nicholson’s ‘abstractions’ are more aesthetic reflections of an inner world of experience than a reproduction of how he really saw things before him. ‘The painting that I find interesting is not so much representative or non-representative, but at the same time musical and architectural, where the architectural construction serves to express a “musical” relationship between form, tonality and colour.’ These harmonic rhythms are evoked by the suggestion of light, thanks to the combination of cream-coloured, broken white and pale grey tints, with subtle dark yellowish, bordeaux red and pale blue-grey accents. In 1949 the Easton & Robertson architects’ bureau commissioned Nicholson to make two large works of art for the interior of the steamship Rangitane of the New Zealand Shipping Company. He made two concave panels that folded around the viewer, as it were, which led to a more intimist experience of the work. Still Life (Curved Oval) has the same concave form. With these works Nicholson introduced a new monumentality into his oeuvre. Nicholson’s large-scale, Cubist-inspired still lifes from roughly the end of the 1940s to 1960 brought him growing international recognition and commercial success. After the retrospective exhibition organised by the British Council in the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, both the KMSKA and KMSKB bought work by this pioneer of British modernism.