Six centuries of artistic creation
1931 Portugal
Nikias Skapinakis revisits the classic still-life genre in a new approach that synthetises figuration and abstraction. Fruit, flowers, a vase, a few objects on a table are depicted in a combination of colour planes whose composition axis, at the centre of the canvas, intercepts reality in the stylised representation of the vase of flowers and some fruit. The utterly flat forms cancel out the three-dimensionality, as a prelude to Skapinakis' later interest in cuttings and collage. Nikias Skapinakis, one of the most significant artists in Portuguese art of the second half of the 20th century, follows his very own visual experimentation journey between figuration and abstraction, with relentless colour concerns. From the mid-1960s, he developed an interest in "abstractive" representation, which he defined as "para-figuration".
| Oil on canvas, 98 x 148 cm
| GUARDA. Municipal Museum of Guarda
