Figures On A Terrace 1938

Léonor Fini painted this scene on a terrace, probably in the mid-20th century, using oil on canvas, and what gets me right away is the palette - muted, almost pastel, but with these little jolts of high chroma, like that green jacket or the stripey skirt. It feels like a dream, maybe a slightly unsettling one. Look at the surface - it’s smooth, almost like she's trying to hide the brushstrokes. But then you see these little details, like the way she’s rendered the figures' crazy hair, all wiry and free. It's like she couldn't resist leaving a trace of the hand, a little bit of chaos in all that order. I keep coming back to the woman in the foreground, in that striped dress. She’s got this intense gaze, like she knows something we don’t. That stripey skirt is so bold against the pale background, a real optical jolt, but it also flattens her out, like she's part of the architecture. De Chirico’s surreal stage sets come to mind, the way he creates these illogical spaces where anything can happen. It's a space where ambiguity reigns, and we’re left to wonder what it all means.