Kádár Béla (1877-1956)

The composition is a cubist still life, featuring a slender bottle in the center and a glass to the left, with white grapes and red fruits on a plate in front of them. The objects are built from overlapping, translucent planes; white outlines and subtle chalk-like shading draw shapes on the surfaces. The background is divided by a wavering, rainbow-hued drapery and neutral gray fields, where decorative floral motifs appear here and there. The color palette consists of restrained grays, white, black, and a few saturated spots: red, yellow, blue, and green balance the neutral tones. The effect of light is conveyed not by perspective shadow but by tonal transitions and transparent layers. The execution evokes the matte, velvety effect of gouache or tempera technique, and the line drawing is occasionally scratch-like. In the lower right corner, a capitalized signature can be read. The tangible iconography and the decorative modernist approach broken down into planes can be linked to the Hungarian avant-garde between the two world wars; its probable origin is in the 1930s or 1940s.

Recommendation:

The painting previously appeared at the Kieselbach Auction House auction, and there is an attestation for it.