Still Life with Fish 1946

Endre Balint made this Still Life with Fish sometime in the 20th century, probably using pastel on paper. It’s all about the marks in this piece; those chalky strokes build up the image, making it seem to breathe. See how the blues and whites in the striped surface create this push and pull, like the fish are swimming on the plate? I love how the simple stripes create this vibrant rhythm. The texture is gorgeous - you can almost feel the roughness of the paper coming through. And those spots on the fish? They're like tiny stars, giving the fish a cosmic shimmer. Balint reminds me a little bit of Morandi, not in style, but in the way he finds so much life in simple, everyday objects. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey, even a fish on a plate can be a whole universe if you really look.” It’s never really about the fish, or the plate, but more about the way that we look.