In faint, elusive forms, the artist presents us with a basket of fish on what looks like a windowsill, from which we glimpse a tranquil sea, in imaginary colours, with two sailing boats calmly floating.

After studying at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, Arias joined the , focusing his output on depicting the austere Castilian landscape, but also, as we can see in this still life, on seascapes.

The brushstrokes are rough and impastoed, with no loss of spontaneity. He is not concerned with defining the outlines of the figures; he is not aiming to capture reality. Indeed, the weave of the wicker basket on which the fish are placed is superimposed on the outlines of the fish themselves.

Arias avoided all specificity of form by means of sketches and figurative allusions and reduced representation to a minimum so as to concentrate on the essential, to the point that at the end of his career he entirely abandoned figurativism in his landscapes and expressed himself through colour alone.

The colour palette is gentle and restrained, being reduced to earth and ochre tones; even the sea is golden, and only the presence of the sailing boats reveals its identity.

As with Francisco Lozano (1912-2000), light is fundamental in Arias’s work: a white light which pervades the whole picture and eliminates shadows. The lines of the horizon are high and heavy. Here it is marked by the edge of the window, and above it is a little patch of that earthy sea.