Georges Spiro- Still life with flowers

ca. 1950-1984
Painting
Oil on canvas
Signed ‘Spiro' lower right   
Wooden frame size : 59 x 50 cm
Work : 55 x 46 cm

Very detailed still life with flowers in which drop shapes are incorporated. This makes the flowers appear to have eyes. It has a smooth finish so that hardly any brushwork is visible. The work is realistic and at the same time imaginative and stylized.

Georges Spiro (Warsaw 1909–1984 Nice) was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1909. He settled in Austria, but when Germany invaded Austria in 1938, Spiro, then a writer and publisher of a literary magazine in Vienna, was arrested. He was able to flee to France with his family. Spiro served in the French army, but his wife died in a concentration camp. In 1946 Spiro had an acclaimed exhibition at the L'Arcade Gallery in London, where the majority of his paintings were sold. That success led to his full-time career as an artist. In 1948 he returned to France and received the Prix Muratore at L'Exposition de la Jeune Peinture. Subsequently, he had many exhibitions in France, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and the United States.