For contemplation

Albert Gleizes

Paris, 1881 – Avignon, 1953

1942
Oil on canvas
216.5 x 131 cm
D 2013.2.11
On indefinite loan from the Museum of Beaux-Arts of Lyon, 2013
© Musée de Valence, photo Éric Caillet

Information

Influenced by the work of Braque and Picasso in the early 20th century, Gleizes exhibited, with his friend Jean Metzinger (1883-1956), paintings that revealed Cubism to the public, and not without scandal.  A theoretician and member of the “Gold Section”, in 1927 Albert Gleizes founded the Moly-Sabata artists’ residence in Sablons, Isère, where a community formed around his ideas.  Begun during the Second World war, the cycle of contemplation supports, of which this canvas is part, invites dynamic viewing through its circulation of motifs and a certain instability of background colours.  At once complex and serene, his abstract paintings remind us of the artist’s unfaltering devotion to Cubism, against the tide of the avant-gardes of the era. 


Albert Gleizes - For contemplation© Museum of Valence, photo Éric Caillet

Albert Gleizes - For contemplation© Museum of Valence, photo Éric Caillet

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