oil on canvas, 131×85 cm
Signed and dated lower right P. Conti 1922
It is a typically contian motif, from the early still lifes, that of the diagonally moved spatial frame, on which the work is also based After the bath. A curious exercise that has no further matches in this form, although it is a collection of episodes, movements, details characteristic of the author, which we find mainly in drawings and graphic exercises. On the other hand, it is an example of Conti’s vast culture and his disposition to relive it according to momentary estrus and personal moods: from the interiors of Dutch painting to the seventeenth-century interiors of a La Tour or Florentine Mannerism, reaching as far as the painting of the Macchiaioli and contemporaries Manet and Picasso. But it is clear that the painter is looking for a tone, and in this case he finds it in a touch of the imponderably absurd.