Femme et Oiseau IV 1952

Curator: What strikes me immediately is this jumble of forms, a kind of beautiful chaos held together with stark black lines. Almost like peering into a dismantled machine or…an exploded thought. Editor: And speaking of exploded, you are now standing before "Femme et Oiseau IV", created in 1952 by the artist Corneille. The work, executed in acrylic on canvas, showcases an expressive style strongly associated with the COBRA movement. Curator: COBRA. Right! It’s that energy, that almost primal scream committed to canvas. Look at the flattened perspective, the bold swathes of color fighting for space. Do you sense any Fauvist undercurrents here too? Editor: Indeed. Note the tension Corneille creates using pure blocks of color, unrestrained in their application. Consider the painting's composition: forms seemingly float, their outlines described with an almost diagrammatic simplicity. It begs for deconstruction—perhaps even the hint of a Cubist influence? Curator: Perhaps...but more free, wilder than analytic cubism ever dreamt of being. I see this constant back-and-forth between figuration and abstraction, always suggesting form but never settling on one definition. A woman…a bird… both dissolving and resolving simultaneously. A little cheeky too? I suspect the artist smirked painting it. Editor: Cheeky, perhaps mischievous too! It challenges our perception. I see the recurring motifs present in much of Corneille's oeuvre – the female figure represented not realistically, but symbolically and the soaring bird. Semiotically, these icons recur as agents, reflecting the movement's ambition for spontaneity, raw expression. Curator: I keep coming back to how seemingly unstable it all is—and yet, it works! Maybe because life feels a little like that, a beautiful precarious balancing act between what we think we see and what’s actually there. Editor: An excellent point. This particular painting demonstrates how formal analysis can give way to an intuitive feeling—to appreciate and recognize balance through shape, color and intention, despite its seeming randomness. Curator: Yes. The colors dance, the forms flirt. "Femme et Oiseau IV" really buzzes. I want to dive right into it. Editor: And perhaps it’s precisely that feeling, that invitation to interpret, that encapsulates what COBRA was truly after.