Still Life of Box of Cigars

At its best, Cossio’s art was of extraordinary quality. The lesson of Cubism undoubtedly remained in the background of Bodegón de la caja de puros, as in the set of paintings done on his return to Spain, but the freedom with which the objects are shaped is the expression of a defined and rich personality. We cannot say – except during his final period, which coincided with Informalism – that he broke with the representative tradition. At the same time, it is obvious that the ambiguity and fluctuation in the forms which float in space, together with the way that colour and light spring from them, correspond to his own view of our times.

At the time when this picture was painted, the forms not only floated but their stability and final fixed position seemed perturbed by lines and cloudiness which created a screen which separated the viewer from the canvas. A time would come when, seduced by the Informalism then in vogue, he would proceed to a formal dissolution, which he had already done in the thirties, in Paris. However, this picture appears to have more clearly defined form and colour. Perhaps for that reason the mobility of the table arrangement and its instability are more obvious. In reality, this is an “abstract” picture, in which the subject is more than ever a pretext, about to disappear. The luminosity that in other pictures seems to come from lights that leap like purposeless fires, here it springs from the clear yellow which takes up most of the space.