Brazilian Landscape 1925

Lasar Segall created this Brazilian landscape painting with oil on canvas, and what strikes me is how he's used these blocks of color to build up a village scene. It's like he's piecing together memories, one brushstroke at a time, building his understanding of the place through the act of painting. The surface is interesting, you can see the marks, the texture of the paint, it's not trying to hide anything. This is Segall working, building up the image with a kind of determined energy. Look at the way he's rendered the buildings. They’re not quite right, but they feel right. There is a kind of ambiguity. They are solid, yet float on the surface. It reminds me a little of Marsden Hartley in its simplified forms and the way he used a restricted palette to create a sense of place. Like Hartley, Segall creates something that's both of its place, and utterly its own thing. It's this tension that makes it so compelling.