Henryk Epstein (1891 Lodz - 1944 Auschwitz), Still life with fish

oil, canvas, 59 × 72.5 cm
Signed p. g.: "H. Epstein."

"Epstein's talent, however, reveals its true scale only in his most recent canvases: still lifes, with a concrete, corporeal, active color that acquires a purer sense, Not Courbet's color. Although the color serves him only to express the "weight" of the object being rendered, its density, its matter, it also emphasizes its plasticity. He exploits the full plastic potential of the object, which he recreates not so much in the form of a spectrum, reflection, or "counterpart", devoid of tangible reality, but in the form of a body, healthy, enlivened by the young blood flowing in it, imbued with freshness. From now on we look at Henry Epstein's canvases not as shadows, color fictions, but as living beings, equipped with muscles, arteries and blood vessels, as beings whose hearts beat with an
with an even rhythm." W. George, Epstein, Paris 1931, pp. 7-13