Nude 1919

This oil painting of a nude was made by René Magritte, maybe in 1929. The palette is all ochre, yellow, olive and red, like a hot summer haze or a faded memory. What I find cool is how the paint is applied so thinly, almost like watercolor. You can see the weave of the canvas underneath. It’s interesting Magritte did not blend the tones, but he left them as blocks. I imagine him building up the image, plane by plane, almost like a collage. I wonder if he had seen Picasso, or maybe Braque? The way her face is rendered, half-lit, half-shadowed, reminds me of early Cubism. But there’s also something very Magritte about it, this flattening of space, this dreamlike quality. You can see him searching for a new way of seeing, taking inspiration from his contemporaries while forging his own path. It reminds me that we are all in conversation with each other, across time.