René Magritte, ‘Portrait d’Arlette Magritte’
René Magritte’s portrait of his niece Arlette is a splendid depiction of beauty in full bloom. Arlette’s youthful glow permeates the surrounding landscape, while the artist’s delicate, yet disparate pictorial motifs – the bilboquet, glass and rose – position the work as an unmistakably surrealist subversion of traditional female portraiture.
Rufino Tamayo, ‘Ramo de geranios’
Dominated by a searing palette of vermilion, rust and charcoal, Rufino Tamayo’s Ramo de geranios radiates symbolic resonance and chromatic intensity. A futuristic couple clasp hands in an open interior, while the table and geraniums before them conjure the warmth and tenderness of domestic life. The work is a consummate culmination of Tamayo’s quest to universalize emotion through geometric form.
Pablo Picasso, ‘Paysage’
In Paysage, Pablo Picasso deliberately distorts perspective, isolating and elevating each element of the composition while simultaneously enveloping the viewer in an abstracted, yet distinctly Mediterranean landscape. Surreal, swirling lines draw the eye into an almost otherworldly terrain while flattened, abstracted forms echo the dramatic expressionism of El Greco’s brooding skies and the turbulence of Van Gogh’s twisting cypresses.
Henri Matisse, ‘Nu au drapé’
In Nu au drapé Henri Matisse is particularly concerned with the mass and balance of the body depicted in contrapposto. With the counterbalance of her hip accentuated by the deep fold of her torso, the model strikes a pose reminiscent of Renaissance sculpture. In the present painting, the dynamic twisting movement and strong modeling show how indebted Matisse was to his early experience as a sculptor in his renderings of the nude in two-dimensional form.
Edward Hopper, ‘Spurwink Church’
Edward Hopper’s Spurwink Church dates to the artist’s time in Cape Elizabeth, ME during the summer of 1927. The artist spent nine consecutive summers in small coastal towns in Maine, documenting quiet moments of solitude. He first began painting in watercolor in 1923 as he grew increasingly fond of illustrating his subjects en plein air, where the fluidity of the medium allowed him to capture the rapidly changing effects of light on these striking coastal subjects.
