Still Life with Pineapple

Optimistic, unprecedentedly loose, and almost playfully painted, this work is a masterful representation of a highly creative period for Filla and his innovative development during the mid-1920s. This significant interwar phase of the artist’s work, designated by theorist and collector Vincenc Kramář as the “second Cubist phase,” belongs to Filla’s most productive and happiest years, when he fully applied his looseness, unbridled energy and taste for experimentation. Upon more lengthy observation of the painting, which looks like a spontaneously executed still life, it becomes clear that the canvas has been thought out in detail and that its creation demanded a great degree of concentration, making it obvious that Filla approached each work with a fresh perspective. In the listed canvas, we can also observe how the author distinctively and with great freedom balanced the depiction of specific objects in the painting, the negation of their volumes and, simultaneously, the anchoring of these objects to a base, which gives us a sense of space. He has placed traditional objects alongside one another: a goblet, a bottle, and a tray, upon which lies a stylised pineapple, a popular motif that represents luxury in First Republic domesticity, its characteristic texture emphasised with a geometric grid and a bright white glint. The primary element of construction is not the sharply cut volumes of earlier Cubist works, but a creative, organic line running along the surface of the objects and between the individual items. With the looseness of shapes comes an emotive use of colour paste and a palette based on earthy tones – muted reds, browns and blacks refreshed with light blue and green accents. A rich, elegant atmosphere and graceful brushwork merely underline the effort to use the same elements repeatedly, but always illuminate them differently, in a fresh way, and imbue them with a “new story.” It is as if the common domestic objects were placed on an imaginary stage infusing them with an enigmatic, almost symbolic meaning. Captivating in its approach, the work significantly enlivens the view of Emil Filla as a reserved Cubist painter and presents him as an initiator of ideas about the perception of modern painting, just as the progressive wing of Mánes Association of Fine Arts evolved in the 1920s. The value of the work is evidenced by its reproduction during Filla’s lifetime in the magazine Český svět (Czech World, vol. 23, no. 2, 1926, p. 2, repro. p. 2) and the fact that it is depicted in the author’s photographic legacy created by Josef Sudek. Its first owner was the important Czech architect Vladimír Karfík, whose projects included a collaboration with Tomáš Baťa on the construction of the city of Zlín. The authenticity has been confirmed by the Filla Foundation and the painting will appear in a forthcoming inventory of the artist’s works. Assessed in consultation with PhDr. R. Michalová, PhD and Mgr. T. Mátl Donné. The expert opinion of PhDR. K. Spra is attached: “[...] The work precisely corresponds to the core of Filla’s work of the latter half of the 1920s. Even if it appears to be very simplified, this is an illusion. Upon further consideration, it reveals many sophisticated qualities. [...].”