Still Life 

Bart van der Leck created this Still Life with oil paint. Van der Leck lived through World War I, a period of great upheaval that challenged the very notion of what art could be. He was a member of De Stijl, a Dutch art movement, which sought a new visual language to represent the modern era. De Stijl artists believed that art should reflect a universal order, embracing abstraction and simplicity. Van der Leck reduced forms to their most basic geometric shapes, using a palette of primary colors. Look how he flattens the objects, denying any sense of depth or traditional representation. What could previously be understood as fruit on a table becomes a series of colored rectangles and squares. What is retained and what is lost in the move towards abstraction? In the end, Van der Leck broke from the De Stijl movement, wanting to maintain recognizable, figurative elements in his work. This Still Life, with its radical simplicity, invites us to reconsider how we perceive the world and what we expect from art.