Still life with a jug 1930

David Burliuk’s ‘Still life with a jug’ feels like it emerged from a dream, or maybe a kitchen late at night in 1930. I can imagine him working fast with thick paint, trying to keep up with his own vision. The jug is the real centrepiece here – a dark, almost brooding presence. It is surrounded by a riot of color, from the fiery reds in the background to the muted tones of the fruit. Look at the confident strokes that define the cloth, each one a deliberate act of translation. There is an energy in those lines; they pulse with a life of their own. I wonder if Burliuk thought about Cezanne when he painted this; or maybe some of the German Expressionists? It reminds me that art is never made in a vacuum, and we are always in conversation with the artists who came before us, riffing on their ideas, pushing the boundaries of what painting can be.