The Veil

The picture by Aleksandra Simińska, presenting a type of podium or stage, with the wings revealing a part of the distant landscape, is painted in the oil on canvas technique. In the colour scheme, there is a prevalence of the blue tones complemented by the diverse shades of grey. As a dominant colour, red appears present in the foreground and – as ulterior ones – greens and yellows.
The architectural form, which is the principal motif, with steps or footlights leading to a kind of proscenium, is closed in both upper corners by the sheets of draped, heavy curtains. In the left part of the composition there is a vertical shape resembling a squat bottle. This imbalance in the proportions and scale between the elements of a still life and a landscape, and the manner of solids modelling with their perceptible weight, is reminiscent of the creation of Giorgio de Chirico. This connotation is also evoked by the ensemble of objects from a variety of seemingly incompatible worlds, and by a sort of ambivalence, indeterminate nature and destiny. But this clue leads even further, because the rigour of the convergent perspective, characteristic for many works of Aleksandra Simińska, always resulting in the widespread landscape on the horizon and the symbiosis of architecture and scenery (Tuscan?), seem to refer directly to the Italian paintings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. [F. Pręgowski]