Fiori

Red geraniums burst out of a terracotta pot, so loaded with paint that the petals look like little dabs of pigment squeezed straight from the tube. Renato Guttuso worked fast and thick, and you can follow the path of his brush through the green leaves, where yellows and blues got dragged into the mix before anything had time to dry. The background is almost entirely black, which is a practical trick as much as an artistic one: against that darkness, the reds hit twice as hard.

Guttuso (1911 to 1987) was a Sicilian painter better known for his political side. A committed anti fascist and lifelong Communist, he made large, angry pictures about war, poverty and labour, including a Crucifixion in 1941 that got him in trouble with the Church. But alongside those he painted hundreds of still lifes: lemons, prickly pears, fish on a table, bunches of flowers like this one. They were his daily exercise, a way of keeping his hand moving and his eye sharp, and they carry the same restless energy as his big statements. The pot here is barely described at all, just a few swipes of ochre and brown, as if he could not be bothered with it and wanted to get back to the flowers.