Bathing women 1908

Andre Derain painted ‘Bathing women’ with oils. The way he's applied the paint, it feels like a process of finding form through color. The texture in this painting is really interesting. Derain uses these visible, almost chunky brushstrokes. It's like he's building the image from blocks of color. Look at the woman on the right, she seems almost camouflaged into the green. This mark-making creates a sense of energy, like everything is vibrating, or maybe even dissolving. The way Derain mixes greens and blues, you can see Cézanne, who famously built form with color. There's something raw and almost urgent in Derain’s marks. It's this kind of restless searching that makes art so alive.