Alfonso Michel

The Letter is the earliest of the thirteen still lifes by Alfonso Michel in the Blaisten collection. It exemplifies the refracted style and studied arrangement of poetic elements that were constants in his work. The object of the title is the least prominent of all the elements in the composition. On a square table draped in a salmon colored cloth, lie three objects: a folded letter; a marble hand gripping an unidentifiable object; and a heavy green glass goblet. The setting is an architecturally imaginative sun-drenched terrace. Two red walls recede diagonally, opening out to the horizon. The circular mouth of the goblet serves like a prism, intensifying our experience of the distant azure sea. On the vessel’s rim, a crack leads into a web of fractured glass, drawing us into its aqueous depths. At the bottom of the goblet is a small red piece of coral; this juxtaposition of coral and vessel also appears in Glass in the Window [Copa en la ventana] (1944; private collection). The fractured glass gives the coral the appearance of a tiny mermaid, transforming the goblet into a miniature aquarium. By employing two vanishing points simultaneously and offering us two vistas-- deep receding space out to the open sea, and a peek into the cool green-blue interior of the vessel--Michel forces the viewer to shuttle back and forth between the seascape in the distance and the still life in the foreground. The effect makes us aware that the composition is a study in contrast and scale, in open and contained space. This dichotomy deflects our attention away from the object in question: the letter. In the still life tradition, a letter can evoke absence, even unrequited love. In combination with the gripping gesture of the dismembered hand, an element also found in Tamayo’s still lifes of the 1920s, the letter conjures a sense of loss and separation. Despite the sun drenched terrace a sense of forlorn moodiness pervades the picture.