|
|
This
is when he suggested that we experiment with "automatic" painting; this
was also when he painted the "le combat des Walkyries" mentioned
earlier. Above all, this painting contains the seed of his future
evolution. He becomes aware that a pictorial language exists apart from
a simple figurative approach.
He paints four big canvases, one for each season, using the "Basin of
the Three Graces" in the Saint-Pierre park in Calais, as his central
theme. The line asserts itself and, by a freer rendering, expresses
with greater acuity the nature of the surroundings and of the central
characters: nannies, a couple, soldiers, and strolling people. The area
in color is more assertive: bright green and gray for spring, dark
green and red for the summer, orange and black for the fall, brown and
gray for the winter. He has already started to master the orchestration
of colors. The color does not fill in a form, laid down flat; it stands
be itself and becomes a modality in itself.
|
|
