María Antonia Dans

MARÍA ANTONIA DANS (Oza dos Ríos, A Coruña, 1922–Madrid, 1988).
“Fruit Bowl on the Table,” ca. 1980.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Cataloged in the monograph *María Antonia Dans* by Luis María Caruncho, p. 294.
Measurements: 24 × 33 cm; 50 × 59 cm (frame).

Still life occupies a prominent place in the work of María Antonia Dans, who approached this genre through a language of intense chromatic expressiveness and deliberate formal simplification. In this work, fruits and vegetables are grouped on a blue platter, forming a compact composition in which the objects are defined primarily by color and outline. The visible texture of the support and the dry application of the paint lend vitality to an everyday scene transformed into an essentially plastic structure.

Created around 1980, the work belongs to the artist’s period of full maturity, when her artistic language had achieved a particularly recognizable synthesis of figuration, chromatic intensity, and compositional refinement.

María Antonia Dans trained with Dolores Díaz Baliño and at the School of Arts and Crafts in A Coruña, subsequently spending most of her career in Madrid. Her work, associated with Galician Neo-Expressionism, focused on landscape, rural life, female figures, and still lifes. Her work is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in A Coruña and in the Afundación collection, and since 2024, her legacy has been honored with a house museum in Curtis.