This solid still life with books is structured around several geometric shapes in warm tones. The main form is that of a rectangular table seen from three-quarters view covered with a light pink tablecloth, the painter’s favourite colour, an open book placed in its centre, with the white cylinder on the reverse of a large sheet printed on the left that pierces the composition. In the foreground, the backrest of a rectangular Lorraine chair, painted against the light, draws verticals that refer to the table legs and the back column. On the right, parallelepiped books are stacked as they turn. A book with a slightly open crimson cover is placed upright in the centre of the canvas between a brush pot and a bottle of wine, all symbols of life for the artist.

With a rather dark peripheral environment, the artist plays on the luminosity of the much lighter surfaces in the center of the canvas to illustrate all the power of artistic creation capable of reinventing the “white canvas”, giving shape to objects and pushing back in all directions the black holes of pictorial sterility.

After the war, after the death of Lucien Simon in 1945 and that of Othon Friesz in 1949, the artist felt alone in forging her destiny as a painter. The use of multiple colours was not yet part of his favourite vocabulary, but the solidity of composition through colour was very present.