A Swiss Modernist Painter

Flowers with Vase, 1918, oil on hardboard, 32 x 32cm

Flowers with Vase, 1918

This work is closely related to the work “La Fenêtre” from 1920: both the coloring and the motif are similar. In this work, we also find flowers in red and yellow standing on a column. Gray tones dominate in the background, the colors become paler, the contours blur, and leave the viewer uncertain about the spatial situation. Although an interior is evoked, the accumulation of disparate spatial elements gives the work a surreal character. The curved lines to the right and left of the flowers are particularly striking, which Evard helps to give plasticity with suggested shadows and which almost give the impression of a vortex. And indeed, the flowers, which initially defy this jumble of colors and shapes, are soon to be drawn into this vortex…