About the work

In various luxuriant shades of red, Sprotte represents the diverse shapes of the poppy petals in an implied semicircle. Precisely through these different forms, which sometimes remind of simply thrown splashes of colour, Sprotte is able to impressively stage the airy and fragile characteristics of the petals of the red poppy. The blue larkspur accentuates the composition at the centre of the image. The complementary contrast of the green swings of the brush intensifies the expression of this floral still life. The expression “I believe in colour as such” makes clear Sprotte’s awareness of the impact of colour in itself.

As a master of reduction, Sprotte also restricts himself to the essential in this work. His gestural use of the brush clearly refers to the beginnings of modernism, to artists like Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, both of whom Sprotte greatly admired. The letters of Van Gogh to his brother were among his favourite reading matter.

Sprotte reduced the natural manifestation to that most meaningful to him. However, the artist doesn’t simply become an interpreter of nature and of the experience of nature, but much more the creator of a new reality.