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

oil, canvas, 38 × 46 cm
Signed l. d.: H.Epstein
"Epstein's talent, however, reveals its true scale only in his most recent canvases: still lifes, with color that is concrete, corporeal, active and acquires a purer sense, This is 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. Henceforth 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 even rhythm." W. George, Epstein, Paris 1931, pp. 7-13.