Nature morte - Still life

From 1912 on Otto van Rees and his family spent the summers in Ascona, the meeting place for artists and intellectuals at the time. In Ascona Van Rees gets involved with Zürich Dada, through his friends Hugo Ball and Hans Arp, resulting in several semi-abstract experiments with paper collage. At the end of 1916 Van Rees starts a series of eight still lifes, which show a style development similar to those of some of his fellow artists. The purely esthetical analytical cubism of Picasso and Braque starts containing more and more narratical elements. The essence of Van Rees' esthetics has always been the arrangement of a composition, which completely balanced and harmonious in form and colour, exists on its own. Therefore the group of still lifes does not form a new starting point for Van Rees' development but summarizes his abilities. The details of form are subordinate to the overall spacial construction of the composition. The artist's concentration on naturalistic forms though can here be seen for the first time. (Herbert Henkels in: Otto en Adya van Rees. Leven en werk tot 1934, Utrecht 1975, p. 83.)
A photograph of this picture is included in the Otto van Rees archive at the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague.