Bodegón con flores

The 1960's for Peláez can be seen as a renaissance; a return to her overall style of the 1940's when she surfaced as a leading figure of modern Cuban painting. Less elaborate in design than the still life's of the 1940's but just as rich in their brilliant colors and impasto, the paintings of this decade again concentrated on centrally placed motifs of fruits and flowers, presented on lace tablecloths beneath stained glass windows. These elements are illustrated in Bodegón con flores. In this picture, Peláez develops her unique techniques through her relatively flat rendering of space, mixture of abstraction and decoration and thickly applied colors in a monochrome arrangement. Peláez used her synthetic abstract language to transform her most intimate domestic reality--her home's architecture, her flower garden, Cuba's fruit, and Havana's tropical light into art and culture. In execution, style and subject matter, Bodegón con flores represents a significant example of Peláez's early 1960's production.