Still Life Interior, c. 1930

Almost like accidentally, a plate of fruit, a candle, a book, and a pipe, distinct through pure colors and clear-cut outlines, are laid out next to one another on a tabletop in Still Life Interior. In the middle of them stands a vase with bright red tulips. The surfaces of the objects, between which a tension between sculpturality, flatness, and incongruous perspectives unfolds, look like smooth varnished metal. The lozenge-shaped shadowy window in the back suggests that Herbert Ploberger (1902–1977), one of the eminent exponents of New Objectivity in Austria aside from Rudolf Wacker (1893–1939), created this oil painting around 1926 in his studio in Rotenturmstrasse. The reducedness and clarity of things has a rarefying, almost meditative effect. The question remains open whether the person who sat in the Thonet chair probably the night before, reading a book and smoking in the light of a candle, is going to come back soon and drink the rest of the wine from the open bottle.

RR, 2021