Still life with Lamp (Around 1937)

Anna Lesznai writes the following about why she paints in the 1938 exhibition catalogue of the Ernst Museum: 'When I was a teenager, I drew everything I liked - trees, flowers, animals, a wandering peasant girl, a resting maiden - and I remember well that I started painting because I was sorry to see the passing of the lovely phenomena of nature. I wanted to preserve life - and I was afraid of death: that was the motivation for my art. And even today it is the capture of memories that drives me to paint. I do not hesitate to admit that I love my »subjects« as life gives them to me. Painting is a tool for me and not an end in itself. In fact, I would like my brush to become the magic knife of an old village butterfly, conjuring up the vanishing surroundings of my long gone childhood, with all its colourful joys and mysterious sorrows. The magic, alas, is weak, but the longing is strong. For me, the secret of the »métier« will always remain a little like the "seven hills of porridge" through which I must pass to reach »Happiness«. I know that I have to work and even the 'kasha' of work tastes good, excites me, interests me! But my wish is that the picture becomes reality!' In other words, for Lesznai, drawing is magic, magic, the desire to preserve life in fear of death. As in the still life you can see now, next to fresh fruit in the background, there is a picture of an old church or an oil lamp, which evokes the old times and reveals the gesture of making a home.