In a classroom studio at Arts Bonita’s Old 41 Road campus, resident artist Carol Broman tenderly arranges her collected treasures—miniature sculptures, worn books and antique teapots—into timeless compositions, fussing over each object until the light breathes life into her arrangements. “When you’re a still life artist, you collect all kinds of things,” she says with a laugh. In another corner of the world, photographer Ori Gersht works in his London studio, crafting classical floral arrangements only to destroy them in spectacular fashion. His high-speed cameras, shooting at more than 1,600 frames per second, capture the moment of detonation as his Dutch Golden Age-inspired blooms explode into crystalline shards. Two artists, working in the same, historic genre—one preserves, the other destroys; both create reflections on beauty, time and our understanding of reality.
From bowls of sun-ripened fruit to decaying table settings, still life art endures through varied mediums and practitioners. The genre flourished in 16th and 17th century Netherlands, as artists were inspired to capture the bounty of exotic imports from the booming maritime trade. Though initially dismissed as art’s lowest rank for its easily marketable subject matter, still life drove artistic greatness—from Jan Davidsz de Heem’s lavish Still Life with Parrots (c. 1640), which hangs just north at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, to Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, which upended art-world hierarchies.
In Southwest Florida, gallerists and artists find fresh inspiration in one of art’s most enduring traditions. While many modern-day creators diverge from the genre with active scenes and dynamic abstracts, several Gulf Coast painters find powerful resonance in classical approaches. Broman studied under renowned New York artist Jacob Collins, a leader in the revival of classical realism.
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Ori Gersht’s Becoming, Dutch Flower 02 (2021)
Ori Gersht’s Becoming, Dutch Flower 02 (2021)
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Autumn Britton’s Oranges (2021)/Photography by Christina Bankson
Autumn Britton’s Oranges (2021)
Emerging local painter Autumn Britton’s impressionist-leaning vignettes evoke a sense of loneliness and isolation. Previous spread: Contemporary artists evolve the still life genre. Photographer Ori Gersht presents a powerful interpretation, with his exploding and burning botanicals capturing the split second where destruction is beautiful.
Drawing on Collins’ techniques, she renders visual narratives with uncanny volume and depth through telling details—cracked book spines suggesting years of reading, weathered surfaces hinting at hidden histories. “It’s like a portrait of a person told through the stuff we carry around with us,” she says. The artist’s use of revealing light captures distinct qualities of each surface—the gleam of polished metal bowls, the transparency of glass vases, the luminous folds of silk drapery. Her contemporary sensibility emerges via playful juxtapositions of modern objects and jewel-toned palettes and resort-style prints, linking classical technique to contemporary decor.
Her canvases resonate with the work of Fort Myers artist Douglas Flynt—another of Broman’s mentors, who also trained under Collins. For Flynt, understanding light and its impact on the perception of color are key to crafting compositions that are precise and more honest. Like many contemporaries, the oil painter was discouraged from pursuing traditional styles, but mentors like Collins reinforced the value of realism as a way of communicating directly with the viewer without pretense. Though a traditionalist at heart, the New York Academy of Art graduate often uses digital rendering as a means of instruction or ideation—adding mathematical fidelity to color theory.
In Fort Myers, emerging artist Autumn Britton pulls from her sculpture studies at Indiana University Indianapolis’ Herron School of Art and Design to hone in on her subjects’ shapes and depths under natural light. Captivated with everyday compositions and the splashes of color that punctuate a daily routine, Britton often depicts household vignettes—a carton of broken eggshells, a cluster of just-washed raspberries. Her impressionist-leaning portfolio (including charming, palm-sized compositions) swings from contemporary to classically staged arrangements. Oranges sees the namesake fruit peeled and segmented against a traditional, dark backdrop, while the Crushed Can series uses bold colors to belie the sense of loneliness in the modern-day scene. “I just saw a crushed can in the parking lot one day, and it struck me,” she says. “It was so solitary, like it was stuck in space.”
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Albert Swinden (1901-1961), Untitled (Still Life #1), 1940. Gouache on board, 20 x 30 in. Artis-Naples, The Baker Museum. 2000.15.233
Albert Swinden, Untitled (1940)
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Olga Costa (German-born Mexican-American, 1913-1994), Naturaleza muerta con objetos mexicanos (Still Life with Mexican Objects), 1944. Oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in. Artis-Naples, The Baker Museum. 2002.2.017. Gift of Harry Pollak. © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City
Olga Costa Still Life #1
Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum’s permanent collection contains Albert Swinden’s Untitled (Still Life #1), which is on display this season as part of In the Making: Sketches, Studies and Maquettes. Olga Costa’s Naturaleza muerta con objetos mexicanos (Still Life with Mexican Objects) showcases how artists interpret the genre through their cultural lens.
In Naples, Italian-born Dario Campanile’s paintings reflect his appreciation for Caravaggio. Campanile’s 2011 In Transition recalls the master’s iconic fruit bowls, while his 2012 Pears in Plastic presents the titular food against an opaque, black background, reminiscent of Juan Sánchez Cotán’s Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber (c. 1602). The plastic wrap’s sloping provides a contemporary parallel to Sánchez Cotán’s string-suspended produce.
Campanile channels Dutch maestros’ lauded use of illusionist trompe l’oeil techniques to bring his paintings to life, with fluttering birds, just-bitten apples with their dripping juices, and vases shining in the golden hour light. “Still life paintings have a life unto themselves,” Campanile says.
Tbilisi-born artist Nodar Khokhobashvili, represented by Naples’ East West Fine Art, offers a rough-hewn approach to realism through textured works on wood. His Salty Fish and Pickle is simple—depicting a fish, two pickles and a glass of clear liquid—yet striking in its use of color. The vibrant green cucumbers cut through the largely grayscale palette; while the rough wooden surface adds a tactile dimension to the scene. “[Wood] invites the viewer to feel the weight of the objects, not just see them,” he says.
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Dario Campanile’s Whimsical Seduction (2014)
Dario Campanile’s Whimsical Seduction (2014)
Italian-born Naples snowbird Dario Campanile’s work recalls traditional still lifes. The cracked pomegranate in Whimsical Seduction provides a symbolic allusion to Greek mythology, and Pears in Plastic recalls the work of Spanish Baroque painter Juan Sánchez Cotán.
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Dario Campanile’s Pears in Plastic (2012)
Dario Campanile’s Pears in Plastic (2012)
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Carol Broman’s The Frog Prince (2010)
Carol Broman’s The Frog Prince (2010)
Fort Myers artist Carol Broman’s The Frog Prince offers a whimsical take on the genre.
Beyond the classical revival sector, contemporaries, like the Israeli-born photographer Gersht, continue to evolve the genre. The London-based artist reimagines Dutch still lifes, using technology to expose the invisible. In several series, he detonates classically inspired scenes, while in On Reflection, electrified mirrors fracture botanical compositions. His high-speed cameras capture moments that exist in a metaphysical space—ones that cannot be seen by the human eye. By fabricating these moments and manipulating their presentation, Gersht blurs the lines between creation and annihilation, history and modernity, and the perceived objectivity of photography as a medium.
This season, two examples of still lifes’ evolution come to Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. Opening in February, In the Making: Sketches, Studies, and Maquettes includes Albert Swinden’s Untitled (Still Life #1) and Untitled (Still Life #2)—geometric studies revealing how modern artists started to deconstruct still lifes. Meanwhile, Amer Kobaslija’s expressive-realistic paintings in the Florida Contemporary installation immortalize his daughter’s toys with an eerie whimsicality. Set against dynamic urban backdrops, the works showcase a kinetic energy unusual for still life.
Once dismissed as lowly and often overlooked, still life has proven remarkably prescient. Centuries after its formal categorization, the genre’s influence permeates contemporary visual culture. From luxury product advertisements to magazine spreads to curated social media feeds, composed snapshots respond to our enduring drive to arrange and document the world around us. Whether classical or subversive, still lifes continue to transform the prosaic into the poetic.