Paraskeva Clark, Presents from Madrid (Présents de Madrid), 1937 Aquarelle sur graphite sur papier vélin, 51,5 x 62 cm Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa
In tilting the still-life objects upward to display them better for the viewer, Clark referenced her teacher Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin (1878–1939). The accumulation of elements that zigzag across the surface read like a collage whose flattening effect is heightened by the typography. Her new interest in collage was sparked by the Russian art journals she ordered from New York in the fall of 1936, which contained illustrations of political posters by avant-garde artists such as Gustav Klutsis (1895–1938). Clark did not, however, go so far as to eliminate pictorial space entirely; depth is registered by the overlapping of objects and shading, particularly in the right-hand page of the manuscript, while the table recedes into the background at the right. This Spotlight is excerpted from Paraskeva Clark: Life & Work by Christine Boyanoski.
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