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GEORGES SPIRO
( 1909 - 1984 )
Along a pale strip of sand, beneath a deep blue evening sky and a still, green-glassy sea, a scatter of sea-worn pebbles and two bright fish are laid out with hallucinatory precision. Each stone is rendered as a small marvel — veined, spotted, translucent, some seeming almost to sprout eyes — while in the foreground a green-and-rose fish stares out with startling clarity. Distant blue hills close the bay. Spiro paints in a smooth, meticulous, dreamlike manner, isolating humble objects in a vast, silent space so that the ordinary becomes uncanny; the empty sea and luminous sky lend the whole scene the charged stillness of Surrealism.
An early and comparatively rare work by Spiro, the Polish-born, Paris-based painter later celebrated for his luminous mosaic-like abstractions. Here, in his Surrealist vein, he shows the same jeweller's eye for colour and texture applied to the poetry of the beach — a quiet, strange and beautifully observed nature morte that rewards close looking.
Title: “Sea Shells"
Signature: Signed lower left
Medium: Oil on panel
Provenance:Private french collection
Size: c. 13 x 16 inches unframed / 19 x 22 inches framed Condition: Very good condition
Spiro moved to France in 1938, and began teaching himself to paint in 1942. He settled in Nice. He has been associated with Surrealism, not only because of the subjects that inspire him but because of his meticulous technique. He participated in collective exhibitions, notably in the French Midi region, but also in London, Bern, Stockholm and in the USA. Other exhibitions include: from 1950 the Menton Biennale; from 1968 the Salon des Peintres Témoins de Leurs Temps (the Painters of Their Time Salon). He had solo exhibitions in the Midi, Lugano, Oran, Zurich, Basel, Montreal, Geneva, Lausanne, London, Vienna and Cologne. In 1958, he received the Prix de la Jeune Peinture in Paris.
Museum and Gallery Holdings
Antibes (Mus. Picasso) Baltimore Paris (BNF): Woman with Blue Rose Philadelphia
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