Still Life 1956

This “Still Life” was made by Alekos Kontopoulos, using oils to build up a mass of painterly forms. It's like he's wrestling with the image, trying to pin down the shapes and colors just so. The materiality of this piece is key – the texture is thick and juicy, and you can almost feel the push and pull of the brushstrokes. Look at the way he's layered those blues and greens, building up the forms from the ground up. The opaque paint gives everything a sense of weight and substance. Then notice the big black void right at the center: it really holds your attention. There’s a dialogue here with artists like de Kooning, who also embraced abstraction as a way of getting at something deeper, something more raw and visceral. For Kontopoulos, as with so many of us, painting is not about answers, but about exploring the questions.