Paysage surréaliste
Jean Lurçat
1939
Oil on canvas
129 x 195 cm
Signed and dated by the artist lower right
"Desolation seemed at that moment to occupy all his thoughts, but he couldn't help externalizing it with all the beauty he could impart by painting it". J. Catesby Jones, American lawyer, collector and friend of the artist.
By 1939, Lurçat was aware of the irreversible nature of rising peril. The coalition governments that succeeded the Front Populaire lost interest in the wreckage of the Spanish Republic. In the arts, this betrayal was denounced in numerous works. Added to this was the increasingly worrying threat of fascism in Europe.
"Jean Lurçat] reacts as an artist, multiplying scenes of combat on the heavy sands of dark beaches, under the massive clouds of a tormented sky: spears, ladders, banners form both the stakes and the instruments of the furious clashes between men struck by madness"(Catalogue raisonné).
The landscape is one of desolation. The sea is the color of blood, the clouds allegorically evoke a French nation going up in smoke, and on the sand, masts and holes herald a macabre event.
Information from the exhibition book Jean Lurçat, Au Seul Bruit du Soleil.
