Oil on Board, Summer Poppies, Signed, French, c.1960

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Paris flea market. Stopped us cold.
A still life of summer poppies in a porcelain vase, oil on board, signed … Read more Paris flea market. Stopped us cold.
A still life of summer poppies in a porcelain vase, oil on board, signed by Olga Nowieka and dated to around 1960. The signature is confident. The frame is original. The colors — saturated reds, warm ochre, the cool white of the vase against a loose painterly ground — have not moved in sixty years.
The brushwork is the thing. Nowieka was working squarely within the French still life tradition but there is nothing dutiful about this painting. The poppies are not arranged for approval. The composition has genuine structure — weight, intention, a sense of where every element needs to be and why. It is the work of someone who had looked at a great deal of painting and then stopped caring what anyone thought about it.
What also makes this piece worth attention is its moment. Postwar French painting produced an enormous quantity of still life work as a generation trained in classical traditions found themselves working in a world that had shifted entirely around them. The best of it carries that tension — inherited form, loosening color, the old vocabulary being spoken in a new accent. This is that painting.
Condition is superb. Colors vivid and unfaded. Minor age-consistent wear. Original period frame. Ready to hang.
Artist: Olga Nowieka (signed)
Medium: Oil on board
Dimensions: 24"W × 30"H × 2.5"D (framed)
Period: c.1960
Frame: Original period frame
Provenance: Paris flea market See less