City with viaduct 1930

This is Louis Marcoussis's 'City with Viaduct,' and looking at it, I can almost feel the cool air of the town depicted. It's like the paint itself has been cooled and quieted down. It's fascinating how Marcoussis reduces everything to these flat, almost geometric shapes. The buildings, the viaduct, the foliage—all rendered with a kind of serene simplicity. You can see the influence of Cubism but there's a softness too, a sense of place that goes beyond mere abstraction. I wonder what it was like for Marcoussis, standing there, trying to capture the essence of this city? The surface of the painting is smooth, as if he didn’t want to disturb the silence of the place. Even the smoke rising from the chimney seems to float without urgency. It reminds me that paintings are not just about what we see, but how we see, and Marcoussis invites us to see the world with new eyes. It’s like he’s saying, “Look closely, there's beauty in the everyday, in the quiet corners of our world."