Natura Morta

A cobalt blue bottle stands at the center of this tabletop jumble, slightly crooked, painted with such thick strokes you can see the ridges of the brush where the glass catches the light. Around it sits an ordinary collection of things and a white cloth spilling off the right edge. The table itself glows mustard yellow against a background split between deep blue and burnt brown, a contrast that does most of the work in holding the picture together.

Renato Guttuso (1911 to 1987) came from Bagheria in Sicily and spent his life painting the everyday world with unusual force. He was a committed anti-fascist who joined the Resistance during the war, and his best known work, a 1941 Crucifixion that set the scene among modern figures, caused enough scandal that the Vatican condemned it. Still lifes like this one were his steady habit between larger projects, painted quickly and loaded with color, somewhere between Italian realism and the flattened shapes he admired in Picasso. The slanted knife blade near the bottom edge is worth finding, a small dark wedge that keeps your eye from drifting off the canvas.