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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Arthur Segal

Still-Life with Candle-Holder and Box

1925 - 1926
Oil on Cardboard.
62.9 x 82.6 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.2000.14
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

This work, which was exhibited in Berlin in a special section of the Novembergruppe exhibition of 1925, together with eleven other paintings by the same artist, was considered finished in 1926, the year when Segal signed and dated it. The image, which corresponds to the definition of "prismatic painting", developed by Segal at the height of his artistic career, is organised around the regular division of the surfaces into eight rectangular fields and the emphasis on the transversal and longitudinal axes, which counterbalance each other. Each of the fields shows a different relationship between light and shade and, in some cases, a highly complex volume, produced by secant planes with independent sources of lighting or, at least, subjected to different refractions. The painted frame, on which the lines and colours of the central image are continued, is visually integrated into the painting itself. The two subjects which give the work its title, a candelabrum without candles-with three legs and three visible arms, and with a structure based on essential stereometric forms-and a parallelepiped, take up the central area of the painting, even sharing the same central axis on which the pole of the candelabrum is placed, but they do not predominate over the rest of the composition.

The candelabrum, as well as the box, appears to be lit by different sources of light not affecting each other. The shading of each of its parts is independent from the others. With regard to the box, the different visible sides of the parallelogram also have their own shading, not determined by the same lighting. This chiaroscuro solution, which affects all the parts of the painting, eliminates the hierarchical dependency of the relations of the volume with a dominating source of light, and applies a system of equality between the different parts of the image in the development of the chiaroscuro. The law of equality of values applied by the painter establishes the need that each of the three basic elements of painting (chiaroscuro, colour and form) be given equal treatment in the work, in other words, that none of them should dominate the others. The composition should also do away with the hierarchic subordination of the different parts. The systematising formulas of the "prismatic image" which, according to its maker, is "the prismatic irradiation of forms and colours", are strongly linked to Goethe's study on the theory of colour and to the idea of perceiving reality as if through a prism, that is, like the multiple whole which represents the formal organisation of light in its refracting process. But of great importance is Segal's attempt to define a way of representing objects which maintains as far as possible an analogy with the structure of the cosmos, in which everything has the same value and, not least, which respects the social principle of equality. In this sense, the painting contributes, with the equalitarian form of its construction, to the ideal of social harmony.

Segal's highly reduced palette presents shades obtained by mixing white and black with three colours which are by no means primary, although they are similar: (brownish) red, (cobalt) blue and (olive) yellow. In this way the painting also acts as a symbol of the totality of the spectrum. The prismatic appearance of the image cannot be attributed to the structure of the painting's surface, which is fundamentally a grid of uncut orthogonal lines, but rather to a multiplicity of foreshortenings and sources of lighting which show the components of that grid. The refractions do not break the regular structure of a painting easily identifiable with a crystalline construction, with a refraction instrument.

The rhythm of the forms and chromatic transitions extends itself, in a coherent systematisation, to the painted frame, which becomes only a rise or a margin in the crystalline structure created. The frame does not act as the limit of an autonomous space, but as the margin of the painting, affected by the same law of formation, which is centrifugal. The elimination of the frame or the integration of the frame into the image, using it as an extension of the painting itself, had been a recurring device in Segal's work since 1917, and one which affected especially his "prismatic" works. Instead of being used to isolate the painting, the frame helps to dissolve its limits. It is not a mere formal addition, but an extension of the elements of the painting outside its own realm.

Javier Arnaldo
 

20th CenturyPaintingOilCardboard
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Still-Life with Candle-Holder and Box. Naturaleza muerta con candelabro y caja, 1925-1926
Still-Life with Candle-Holder and Box
Arthur Segal

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Still-Life with Candle-Holder and Box. Naturaleza muerta con candelabro y caja, 1925-1926
Still-Life with Candle-Holder and Box
Arthur Segal

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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