Objects that are old and worn by use and exposure indeed seem to fascinate Zlotnik. In his wanderings around Paris, he has an eye for the texture of an old tenement wall or a battered and rusty old metal mailbox and thus collects odds and ends that he reproduces in his studio, in relief to his boxes or in drawings and painting. He never frequented bookstores, art galleries or museums: he was too busy with his own work. And in fact, he destroyed a great deal of his work because it failed to satisfy, him. It even happened that a piece of- work was finished and sold, but by the time the new owner came to fetch it, it Would be repainted with a new work.

During the first period in the development of his own style, grays were dominant. Almost drowning in a haze of gray, the objects in Zlotnik's paintings come forth like ghosts rising to haunt us from a world which is other, but which is also perhaps more permanent and less unstable, less rich in illusions than the one in which we normally live.

The only major modern painter with whose work Zlotnik's recent paintings might well be compared would be Giorgio Morandi, although his own manner remains very different from that of the great Italian master. In many of the still-life com positions of Zlotnik, one can detect also an affinity with those seventeenth century Spanish painters of remarkably reticent and sober compositions of a kind that, in Spanish, is known as "bodegon." Zlotnik chooses, however, most of the time to depict, as Morandi did, too, throughout the last decades of his life, mainly objects which, as one might be tempted to say, "have seen better days," rather than the traditional fruit and vegetables of- a Spanish "bodegon."

He later created a series of perfectly realistic three dimensional still-life objects set in boxes and conceived in an idiom which borrowed its techniques from both the sculptor's and the painter's arts so as to create the trompe-l'oeil illusion of real objects, such as an old and rusty key or a paint-brush, in fact a true imitation of such an object. Very soon, however, he turned to painting a few very lifelike portraits, but more often still-life canvases where he seemed to be concentrating his attention on the texture of the objects depicted while restricting his use of color to a somber and limited range of grays and beige's. In many respects, these earlier still-life canvases, in many of which he groups the symbolic instruments of traditional masonry, display a remarkable affinity with the art of the late Giorgio Morandi.

A door or the shutters of a window, in one of Zlotnik's more recent paintings, are thus very clearly those of an old and abandoned house, and the objects depicted in most of his still-life compositions appear likewise to have been salvaged from a dusty attic or flea market. But in spite of this similarity with Morandi in the choice of subjects for so many of his paintings, Zlotnik's actual style of sheer brushwork is very different and remains truly personal, in fact as individual as a style of handwriting. His use of pigments is less traditional than Morandi's, sometimes even quite impressionist or even expressionist. His choice of pigments too, mostly grays an-earth tones, often also displays an unexpected and surely unconscious affinity with the work of the much neglected French Impressionist master Eugene Carriere, whom art historians now prove to have been a veritable pioneer in monochrome painting or in the use of a very restricted pallette.

I have always been fascinated by those few painters who, like some Dutch still-life masters, the Spanish masters of the "bodegon." William Harnett in America, Morandi and now Zlotnik, appear to refrain so consistently from depicting the human figure, as if unconsciously respecting the Biblical commandment which condemns the creation of idols. There have nevertheless been periods, in Zlotnik's evolution, whether as a sculptor or painter, when he has not so consistently shunned represent ing human figures, and has even revealed his quite exceptional talent as a portrait painter, in fact once in a truly remarkable self-portrait. A few years ago, he also painted a few monumental male nudes of rare quality. But even in these few portraits and nudes, lie remained faithful to the muted harmonies of grays and earth colors of most of his still life compositions, although in some of his more recent paintings of doors and windows he now allows himself also the use of some other colors in order to achieve more striking contrasts. Whatever the subject of any of his paintings, the mood that it communicates remains, however, one of quiet meditation on the passage of time and on the fatal mortality of all objects and beings.

But Zlotnik appears never to remain satisfied with the perfection achieved in any one of these idioms that he has successively formulated and soon practiced with such complete mastery. In the last few years, he has thus been producing much larger canvases which generally depict still-life arrangements of objects observed in his Paris studio, such Lis a musical instrument abandoned on a chair, or else architectural details, such as doors, windows, or a balustrade, which lie has apparently observed and sketched outside. Not only has he by now developed in these later works a far more free and painterly technique so that his very brush-stroke has become a personal style of writing, but he is also displaying, especially in his most recent canvases, a far greater interest in the use of color.

The very nostalgic quality of his art might easily lead one to believe that this expresses a streak of melancholy in his character. His life remains, in this respect, in striking contrast with his art, in fact at all times cheerful and even convivial. his art thus appears to be the expression of moods of meditation which display a powerful elegiac nature, in fact a sense of the fleeting destiny of reality, which is at all times doomed to slow change or decay.

In the nineteen years of our friendship, I have thus been able to observe Alexandre Zlotnik's rapid and often surprising evolution, from the very skillful young sculptor and surrealist draftsman of our first meeting to the slightly different, much more mature and fascinating painter that he has now become. Nor is this, I feel, likely to remain his manner for any great length of time.

Never satisfied with the perfection he has achieved and always curious of other possibilities of selfexpression, he can still be expected to experiment for many years to come in a variety of other styles and techniques, perhaps even returning some day to his original interest in sculpture, though certainly, should this occur, in a new style of sculpture that would no longer have much in common with either his successes as a young Socialist Realist portraitist and creator of monuments in Soviet Russia, or with the Surrealist bronzes that he produced for a while when he first began to live and work in Paris.

Edouard Roditi

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