In his 1917 work “Green Apples,” André Evard once again transforms landscape and still life into a poetic, almost dreamlike composition. The background is rendered in delicate pink and red hues, and its angular structures evoke rugged mountain peaks, yet it remains free of naturalistic representation and could therefore also depict draped fabric. Clearly recognizable, vibrant green apples lie upon it—a clear nod to the color palette also favored by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
As in “Orange” from 1917, abstraction and concrete objects merge here into a visionary pictorial world. Evard moves between visible reality and inner imagination, but while the orange sun of the earlier work creates a monumental, almost metaphysical effect, “Green Apples” remains somewhat more tangible in its motif design, yet simultaneously surreal due to the unusual pink underpainting. In doing so, Evard, consciously or unconsciously, anticipates a mindset and avant-garde movement that would only come to define the art world in the early 1920s.