Flowers in a White Vase

While painting this picture, Stasys Ušinskas (1905–1974) was more concerned about how than what to portray. The subject of this still-life is particularly ordinary: a bunch of dahlias, asters and bending-over lilies in a white faceted vase standing on the corner of a table, against a background of bluish drapery descending in hard folds. The artist, who was living in Paris at the time, was not content with the usual painting materials: he decided to use a new method to improve the texture, and covered plain areas with coarse sand, thus achieving a flickering effect. In this way, he enriched the objects with even more materiality. It is an excellent example of the modification of a genre tradition which had turned into a visual stereotype! Text author Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.