Estaminet - Flemish Tavern

Ury, an individualist among artists, painted this interior in Belgium after a long period in Paris — three years before moving to Berlin where he established himself as a painter of cityscapes. “Skilled in the use of his palette, yet with little creative power:” this assessment by his contemporaries points towards the independence with which Ury reacted to contemporary art. The duality of this work was a particular source of irritation, for it combined Impressionistic sensitivity to the phenomena of light and shade with geometric space and stereometric figures, which gave the subject matter a metaphysical quality that transcended the ordinary and everyday.