950 - Helga Veit-Gommel, “Glas-Studie”, pink rose in a spherical glass vase, 1975

Helga Veit-Gommel, “Glas-Studie”, pink rose in a spherical glass vase, 1975 Oil on plywood, signed at lower left “H. Veit-Gommel”. Verso on an affixed paper label titled “Glas-Studie”, dated “August 1975” and signed “Helga Veit-Gommel”. A single pink rose on a leafy stem in a compressed spherical glass vase with a short cylindrical neck, the wall with bright highlights; it stands on a light ground before a deep blue background, at front right a single pink petal. Good age-appropriate condition, slight scratches. Image 27.5x21.5 cm (HxW), framed in a gold-coloured moulding, frame bumped, frame width 3.5 cm. The painting belongs to the genre of still life, the depiction of motionless objects such as flowers, fruit and glasses, which emerged as an independent genre of painting at the beginning of the 17th century. Antwerp and Utrecht were centres of flower still life in the 17th century; in the late 19th and 20th centuries painters such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque and Giorgio Morandi took up the genre anew with simplified forms. Since antiquity the rose has been regarded as a symbol of love, joy and youthful freshness and has borne the epithet “queen of flowers” since Sappho, a name that became established in Europe in the Baroque and Rococo periods; because of its fragile petals it also stands for transience. The artist's own title “Glas-Studie” (glass study) places the glass vase at the centre of this small-format rose still life of 1975.