Oil On Canvas - Albert Deman - Still Life - XXth

Very beautiful oil on canvas by the French painter and sculptor, Albert DEMAN (1929-1996).

It is a still life representing a magnificent wicker basket where fruits and flowers, pears and anemones are mixed, placed on the corner of a scarf placed on the white and black tiles sublimated by a magnificent American box frame.

Period: XXth
Dimensions: H: 60 x W: 100cm
Signed: Bottom right

Still life painting is considered an artistic genre on par with landscape, portrait, genre scene and history paintings .
The works on still lifes deal with everything that is considered non-living or no longer is: food, fruits, flowers, game or various objects.

All of these elements are organized in a precise framework, thought out by the artist in order to create a symbolic and technical composition.

Objects, fruits and flowers are in painting what words are for language, ie a signifier for a signified, or even a precise concept.

Depending on the period and culture, the same object may intersect several symbols. Artists take these symbolic elements into account in their compositions, however the existence of contradictory meanings in the same symbolic object is not a problem.

Each of the objects represented can reveal its true meaning depending on the circumstances and its presentation in the works.

However, we must avoid giving painters too many intentions in the elaboration of their still life, at the risk of distorting the perception of what still life was in the past.

This symbolic vagueness offered an important freedom to these men of the Renaissance and of modern times by leaving them the possibility of reading what conforms to their aspirations.

And what do you think the painter wanted to transcribe as a message?