ADOLPH VON MENZEL

This humble everyday subject, meticulously painted, may be a view from the artist's studio in Berlin. Here, Menzel elected to represent human beings only obliquely, through the traces of their activity: a vegetable garden to supply the kitchen, the red postbox on the fence, the drying laundry. Of particular originality are the unusual viewpoint adopted by the artist and the cropping of the image, so that the whole composition appears to be a fragment as informal as a snapshot.