Still Life with Cup

Edith London spent her childhood in Berlin and later embraced Cubism as a student in Paris. With the advent of Nazism, she emigrated to the States and settled in Durham, North Carolina. For many years she served as the slide librarian for Duke University’s art department.

Still Life with Cup exemplifies Abstract Expressionism, the dominant genre of modernism in the 1950s. Various patches of broad brushstrokes overlap and activate the composition. The cup referred to in the title is barely visible as a black shape at the bottom center. The surface of the work is highly textured and, as London declared, “I want my work to be touchable in the way music is touchable.”