Amédée Ozenfant

Sale: Christie's London, 4 April 1989, lot 198
Dr. Arthur Brandt, New York (acquired at the above sale)

P. & M. Guénégan, Amédée Ozenfant 1886-1966, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, St Alban, 2012, p. 526, no. 1960/011 (illustrated)

Amédée Ozenfant was a French cubist painter and writer, who, together with Le Corbusier, was responsible for founding Purism, a highly influential 20th-century art movement. The two artists set out the theory behind Purism in the 1918 publication Après le Cubisme. The manifesto emphasised the purity of the geometric and simplified forms that made return to recognisable forms.

Nature morte, Tabagie was created during Ozenfant's later years, whilst writing his Mémoires. Unfurling his past on paper helped him revisit the essential values of Purism on canvas. He returned to his favourite themes—the depicted stacked cups/bowls appear in sketches 40 years earlier—and placed them into introspective, ethereal landscapes. One can almost feel the contemplative air of the painting; the calming wisp of exhaled smoke, left to linger whilst the artist reflects upon their life's work.