Marina

Rocks rise out of a churning sea like broken teeth, painted in slabs of brown, ochre and near black. The water beneath them is a restless mix of green and grey, with foam laid on in thick white strokes that look as if they were pushed around with a knife rather than a brush. Above, the sky is heavy and dark, but a band of pale yellow light breaks through near the horizon, catching the top edge of the tallest rock. The signature in red at the top right belongs to Renato Guttuso, who painted this kind of coastline over and over throughout his life.

Guttuso was born in 1911 in Bagheria, a town on the Sicilian coast just east of Palermo, and the sea stacks of that shoreline were part of his everyday view. He is best known as a painter of people and politics, a committed anti-fascist and communist whose large figure paintings tackled war, labour and Sicilian village life in a bold realist style. But he returned often to seascapes like this one, where the subject is simply weather and rock and water. The paint here is applied fast and loose, with colours that stay a little muddy on purpose, suggesting a day when the sea was not behaving. Compared to his crowded political canvases, it feels like a painter working for himself, testing how few strokes it takes to make a wave break.