Stillleben mit gelber Tüte

In its clarity »Still Life with Yellow Bag« appears sober and laconic. With an apparently “objective” gaze, Franz Lenk depicts his painting utensils, creating a counterimage to the opulent arrangements familiar, for example, from the flower still lifes of the Impressionists. Instead, he captures his objects in a manner devoid of all pathos. Like other New Objectivist artists, he attempts to approach reality through the everyday—in this case the artist’s commonplace objects of daily use. Employing a painting technique that captures every last detail, Lenk also succeeds in meticulously reproducing the handwriting on the yellow bag "Gelbes Ocker" (yellow ochre).

Lenk’s still life represents a clear stylistic break with the experiments in color and form of the preceding Expressionism. For Lenk, the return to representational painting is associated with an old master painting technique in which a thin application of paint and multiple layers are essential elements. However, his still life is also a type of self-portrait in absentia. Everything points to the artist—paint, palette knife, and cigarettes—and although he remains unseen, he is implicitly present through the act of painting.